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By  Emile  Faguet 

Initiation  into  Philosophy 
Initiation  into  Literature 


THE    DREAD    OF 
RESPONSIBILITY 


BY 


EMILE    FAGUET 

MEMBER   OF   THE    FRENCH    ACADEMY 

AUTHOR   OF  "  THE  CULT  OF  INCOMPETENCE,"  "  INITIATION 

INTO    LITERATURE,"   "INITIATION   INTO 

PHILOSOPHY,"  ETC. 


TRANSLATED,   WITH   INTRODUCTION,   BY 
EMILY   JAMES    PUTNAM 

AUTHOR    OF 
"SELECTIONS    FROM   LUCIAN,"    "THE   LADY,"    ETC. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

ZTbe  Iftnfcfterbocfeer  press 

1914 


®* 


-> 


Copyright,  1914 

BY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


TCbe  ftntc&erbocfeer  ipress,  t^evc  IJorft 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I. — Legal  Ideas  and  Customs 
II. — Professions 
III. — In  the  Family     . 
IV. — In  Political  Customs 

V. — For  Each  One  of  Us 


3 
1 06 

145 
164 
216 


m 


INTRODUCTION 

M.  Faguet  has  hitherto  been  known  chiefly 
as  the  author  of  a  brilliant  destructive 
criticism  of  pure  democracy  and  the  social- 
istic tendency.  In  the  present  volume  he 
supports  his  position  by  fresh  examples, 
and  in  addition  he  outlines  a  constructive 
suggestion  for  a  true  aristocracy,  a  govern- 
ment, under  democratic  forms,  by  the  really 
best. 

The  polity  of  the  United  States,  as  M. 
Faguet  points  out,  is  not  a  democracy  at  all; 
and  he  is  doubtless  amused  by  the  circum- 
stance that  after  nearly  a  century  and  a  half 
of  it  we  cannot  tell  whether  its  failure  of 
perfection  is  due  to  its  being  too  nearly  a 
democracy  or  to  its  being  too  remote  from 
one.  M.  Faguet  finds  in  France  the  nearest 
approach  to  a  pure  democracy  that  the  world 
has  seen,  except  for  fifty  years  in  Athens,  and 


vi  Introduction 

he  believes  that  the  course  of  events  will  be 
in  the  direction  of  a  still  closer  approximation. 
Perhaps  we  shall  see  in  actual  operation 
the  ideal  of  government  entertained  by  Elie 
Reclus  and  his  friends  in  1870,  who  believed 
that  France  could  best  be  administered  if 
every  citizen  on  his  way  to  business  each 
morning  dropped  into  a  suitable  box  his 
vote  on  all  questions  from  foreign  relations 
to  the  police  regulation  of  ownerless  cats. 
This  ideal  is  not  shared  by  M.  Faguet,  but 
he  is  far  from  opposing  to  it  the  alternative 
ideal  of  monarchy.  He  believes,  on  the 
contrary,  in  the  possibility  of  restoring  the 
sense  of  social  responsibility,  which,  in  his 
view,  democracies  abhor,  by  the  creation  of  a 
literal  aristocracy. 

There  is  very  perceptible  in  this  country,  in 
opposition  to  the  extreme  democratic  theory, 
a  wish  to  increase  rather  than  to  decrease 
personal  official  responsibility,  to  cut  down 
the  number  of  elective  offices,  and  to  lengthen 
terms.  The  work  of  the  Short  Ballot  Or- 
ganisation   and    the    increasing    popularity 


Introduction  vii 

of  commission-government  for  cities  and 
counties  in  widely  separated  parts  of  the 
country,  are  evidences  of  this  wish.  The 
maxim  that  self-government  is  better  than 
good  government  is  dearer  to  none  than 
to  Tammany  Hall.  Certainly  no  one  but 
Tammany  Hall  and  the  progressives  still 
believes  it  to  be  a  public  gain  that  the  lower 
east  side  of  New  York  City  should  turn  out 
regularly  on  election  day  to  vote  itself  a 
higher  death-rate.  Some  form  of  govern- 
ment by  the  most  fit  we  shall  doubtless  come 
to  if  society  in  its  present  form  is  to  survive. 
The  trouble  with  all  aristocracies  known  to 
history,  though  many  of  them  have  done 
notable  social  service,  is  that  they  have  been 
vitiated  by  the  possession  of  great  vested 
interests  to  protect.  It  has  long  been  whis- 
pered and  is  now  said  aloud,  by  Professor 
Beard  in  his  Economic  Interpretation  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  that  the 
fathers  of  the  republic,  the  Constitutional 
Convention  of  1787,  were  such  an  aristo- 
cracy, representing  great  groups  of  person- 


viii  Introduction 

alty  interests  which  had  been  adversely 
affected  under  the  Articles  of  Confederation  ; 
that  the  propertyless  masses  under  the  pre- 
vailing suffrage  qualifications  were  excluded 
at  the  outset  from  participation  through 
representatives  in  the  work  of  framing  the 
Constitution;  and  that  the  Constitution  was 
ratified  by  the  votes  of  probably  not  more 
than  one-sixth  per  cent  of  the  adult  males. 

Plato,  whose  ideal  state  was  to  be  governed 
by  an  aristocratic  class,  not  hereditary  but 
perpetually  recruited  from  the  rest  of  the 
population,  expressly  barred  his  governors 
from  owning  private  property,  although 
anyone  else  in  the  state  might  do  so.  This 
notion  seems  to  us  at  present  merely  roman- 
tic, but  one  of  the  most  hopeful  omens  for  our 
social  future  is  the  fact  that  there  is  actually 
growing  among  us  a  class  of  men  who  are 
willing  to  forego  the  financial  rewards  of  great 
talents  for  the  sake  of  serving  the  state.  It 
looks  as  though  we  should  be  driven  by  our 
social  and  political  embarrassments  to  seek 
these  men  more  and  more  persistently,  to 


Introduction  ix 

trust  them  farther,  to  give  them  longer  terms 
of  office  and  more  absolute  powers,  and 
above  all  to  protect  them  from  the  moods  of 
Demos.  We  shall  communicate  with  them 
not  in  terms  of  initiative  and  referendum, 
but  as  Socrates  prayed  to  his  god:  "Give  us 
what  is  good,  whether  we  pray  for  it  or  not; 
and  avert  from  us  the  evil,  even  if  we  pray 
for  it." 

But  apart  from  an  accidental  aristocracy 
like  this,  consisting  of  specially  fit  individu- 
als here  and  there,  and  evolved  by  social 
and  ethical  rather  than  by  political  forces, 
M.  Faguet  wants  a  political,  constitutional 
aristocracy.  His  aristocracy  is  not  to  be 
one  of  wealth  or  of  birth  or  even  of  talent, 
but  one  of  social  capacity.  He  defines  an 
aristocratic  element  of  the  state  as  "a  part 
which  has  enough  of  vitality,  of  cohesive 
power  and  of  sense  of  responsibility  to  form 
a  group,  an  association,  an  organisation, 
to  become  a  living  thing,  that  is  to  say, 
a  collective  person."  Among  aristocratic 
elements  he  names  the  bench,  the  bar,  the 


x  Introduction 

army,  the  chambers  of  commerce,  the 
labour-syndicates.  His  practical  comments 
on  the  possibility  of  reforms  in  this  direc- 
tion under  the  present  constitution  in 
France,  his  references  to  our  own  constitu- 
tion, which,  it  must  touch  us  to  note,  he 
admires,  and  his  analysis  of  the  psychology 
of  democracy,  should  be  of  almost  as  much 
interest  to  us  as  to  his  own  people. 

M.  Faguet  has  a  strong  objection  to  the 
way  justice  is  administered  in  France,  based 
on  the  ground,  surprising  to  most  Anglo- 
Saxons,  that  it  is  too  favourable  to  the 
criminal.  "Given,"  says  he,  "that  of  every 
hundred  crimes,  fifty  remain  unknown;  that 
of  the  remaining  fifty,  50  per  cent  of  the 
authors  are  undiscovered;  that  of  the  re- 
maining twenty-five,  75  per  cent  of  the 
authors  are  acquitted  ;  and  you  can  calculate 
that  a  criminal  when  he  commits  a  crime 
has  94  chances  to  6  against  being  punished. 
This  makes  criminal  industry  much  less 
aleatory  than  small  shopkeeping,  for  50 
per  cent  of  the  small  shopkeepers  fail,  while 


Introduction  xi 

only  6  per  cent  of  the  industrials  of  crime 
come  to  grief.  .  .  .  The  profession  of  murder, 
while  not  offering  (we  must  admit)  absolute 
security,  is  at  least  one  of  the  safest;  public 
office  and  murder  are  the  only  trades  that 
mean  almost  complete  repose.  This  turns  a 
great  number  of  serious  minds  towards  crime 
and  public  office ,  and  away  from  industry.  " 

Disgust  with  the  slowness  and  inefficiency 
of  our  own  criminal  procedure  has  led  some 
of  our  lawyers  to  view  with  envy  the  char- 
acteristic features  of  the  Latin  inquisitorial 
system.  Mr.  Taft  encountered  Roman  law 
in  the  Philippines,  and  after  study  and 
experience  of  its  workings,  published  a  num- 
ber of  papers  and  addresses  in  which  he  set 
forth  his  view  of  the  advantages  of  some  of 
its  methods,  including  that  most  abhorrent  to 
Germanic  ideas,  the  examination  of  defend- 
ants in  criminal  cases.  Mr.  Frederic  R. 
Coudert,  in  an  exceedingly  discriminating 
and  impartial  article  on  French  criminal 
procedure,  printed  in  the  Yale  Law  Journal 
for  March,  1 910,  points  out  that  the  relax- 


xii  Introduction 

ation  by  statute  here  and  in  England  of  the 
strict  rule  against  self-incrimination,  by  per- 
mitting a  defendant  to  take  the  stand  if  he 
wishes,  is  a  long  step  in  the  direction  of  the 
inquisitorial  method.  For  an  innocent  man 
will  in  most  cases  be  anxious  to  tell  his  own 
story,  and  though  the  statutes  provide,  and 
the  judge  must  charge,  that  the  failure  of 
the  defendant  to  testify  is  to  raise  no  pre- 
sumption against  his  innocence,  still  jurors 
are  men.  Everyone  outside  the  courtroom 
received  from  the  failure  of  Becker,  accused 
of  the  murder  of  Rosenthal,  to  take  the  stand, 
a  certain  impression  from  which  it  would  be 
strange  if  the  jury  alone  were  immune.  In 
practice,  the  procedure  of  our  police  and 
magistrates'  courts  uses  the  inquisitorial 
system,  at  the  dictation  of  necessity  and 
common  sense.  "The  rule  against  com- 
pelling examination  of  parties  in  criminal 
cases,"  says  Mr.  Coudert,  "may  well  be 
thought  to  have  outlived  its  usefulness.  It  is  of 
no  value  to  the  innocent,  and  highly  detri- 
mental to  society  in  its  war  against  crime.  " 


Introduction  xiii 

It  seems  therefore  to  men  like  Mr.  Taft 
and  Mr.  Coudert  that  the  inquisitorial 
system,  while  free  from  the  charge  of  oppres- 
siveness if  honestly  used,  is  still  a  more 
effective  instrument  for  the  suppression  of 
crime  than  the  common-law  method,  which 
gives  the  guilty  an  unfair  advantage.  But 
even  armed  with  this  instrument,  French 
justice,  according  to  M.  Faguet,  punishes  only 
6  per  cent  of  the  criminals.  The  accused  in 
a  French  criminal  court  has  advantages 
unknown  to  our  defendants;  he  and  his 
counsel  have  the  last  word,  instead  of  the 
prosecution  as  with  us,  and  cross-examin- 
ation is  not  permitted,  since  all  interrogation 
of  witnesses  is  done  by  the  judge.  In  addi- 
tion to  these  advantages  of  procedure,  he  is 
the  beneficiary  of  French  good  nature  through 
the  form  of  the  verdict  of  circonstances  atténu- 
antes and  of  the  recommendation  to  mercy, 
with  which  M.  Faguet  makes  merry.  The 
French  jury  arrives  at  its  verdict  by  a 
majority  vote,  a  method  very  often  desider- 
ated here  in  place  of  our  extravagant  demand 


xiv  Introduction 

that  twelve  men  shall  be  in  absolute  accord. 
But  a  drawback  to  the  majority  rule  is  the 
tendency  to  compromise,  which  results  in 
many  cases  in  the  verdict  of  circonstances 
atténuantes,  and  gives  the  public  the  impres- 
sion that  the  circonstances  accompanied  the 
deliberation  rather  than  the  crime.  Our 
juries  as  a  matter  of  fact  act  on  the  same 
tendency  to  compromise  rather  than  to  dis- 
agree, and  express  it  by  finding  a  lower  degree 
of  crime  than  the  prosecution  called  for. 

One  criticism  of  criminal  procedure  as 
appropriate  to  our  own  as  to  the  French 
is  expressed  in  M.  Faguet's  brilliant  and 
closely  reasoned  pages  on  the  psychic  re- 
sponsibility of  the  criminal.  The  clumsy 
and  blundering  efforts  of  our  law  to  reflect  the 
attitude  of  modern  psychology  towards  the  de- 
linquent are  not,  it  appears,  ours  only.  French 
justice  also  is  halted  by  the  apparent  paradox 
that  the  more  guilty  a  man  is,  the  less  he  is 
responsible.  The  solution  of  the  difficulty  was 
not,  of  course,  left  to  M.  Faguet  to  discover, 
but  his  version  of  it  has  value  and  charm. 


Introduction  xv 

The  reader  must  be  cautioned  on  one  or 
two  minor  points.  In  his  haste  M.  Faguet 
says  that  English  law  is  nothing  but  juris- 
prudence. He  does  not  mean  that  ;  he  means 
only  to  point  out  the  very  large  place  occu- 
pied by  jurisprudence  in  English  law  as 
compared  with  French  law.  And  when  he 
says  that  the  ancient  republics  had  a  pro- 
found contempt  for  "anyone  who  does  any 
work,"  basing  his  view  on  Aristotle's  well- 
known  remarks,  he  allows  the  opinion  of  a 
reactionary  of  the  decadence  to  outweigh  the 
facts  of  the  great  period.  As  a  corrective  of 
this  impression,  the  reader  is  referred  to  The 
Greek  Commonwealth,  where  Mr.  Zimmern, 
leaving  Plato  and  Aristotle  out  of  the  picture, 
shows  us  the  great  public  of  workingman 
citizens  that  preserved  Europe  for  Europeans 
at  Salamis,  that  formed  Pericles's  constitu- 
ency, and  that  with  its  own  hands  built  the 
Parthenon. 

E.  J.  P. 

New  York,  March  20,  19 14. 


What  do  they  want?  To  be  irresponsible. 
It  is  the  history  of  the  French  people  for  a 
century  and  it  will  be  their  history  indefi- 
nitely, unless  this  book  reforms  them,  which 
I  count  on  somewhat  but  not  very  much. 
They  want  to  be  irresponsible.  They  form 
their  ideas  of  law  in  accordance  with  this 
design;  they  organise  and  practise  their  pro- 
fessions to  this  end;  they  have  a  family  life 
governed  by  this  thought;  they  have  a  social 
life  controlled  by  this  principle. 


THE  DREAD  OF  RESPONSIBILITY 

I 

LEGAL     IDEAS     AND     CUSTOMS 

The  whole  system  of  law  and  the  whole 
legal  usage  of  the  régime  which  followed 
1789  are  dominated  by  the  idea  that  he  who 
judges  is  irresponsible,  and  that  no  blame 
is  to  be  cast  upon  him.  In  fact,  the  judge 
does  not  judge  in  equity  but  in  accordance 
with  the  law.  In  other  words,  he  is  not  a 
judge,  he  is  a  clerk.  He  is  a  man  who  in 
connection  with  a  case  declares  the  law  which 
has  foreseen  that  case  and  applies  to  it.  He 
is  a  man  who  fits  the  case  to  the  law,  which 
means  that  the  law  applies  exactly  to  the 
case, — "covers"  it,  as  the  Germans  say, — 
and  who  gives  his  decision  accordingly. 

As  a  result  he  is  absolutely  irresponsible; 
3 


4       The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

it  is  the  law,  not  he,  that  renders  the  de- 
cision. The  decision  proceeds  from  the  law 
automatically  as  it  were.  Whom  can  the 
loser  blame?  The  judge?  Evidently  not. 
He  can  blame  the  law  as  much  as  he  likes, 
but  it  is  impossible  to  blame  the  judge.  The 
judge  is  strictly  irresponsible. 

Someone  may  ask,   would  you  prefer  to 
have  a  judge  judge  in  equity — that  is,  arbi- 
trarily?    That    would    be   a   fine    state    of 
things.     Don't  you  know  that  when  Savoy 
was  united  to  the  kingdom  of  France,  the 
first  favour  the  Savoyards  asked  of  the  king 
of  France  was  to  be  no  longer  judged  in 
equity  but  according  to  some  law,  no  matter 
what?      Anything  would  satisfy  them  pro- 
vided it  was  no  longer  equity,  which  is  always 
so  perfectly  inequitable.     Would  you  wish  to 
be  a  disciple  of  President  Magnaud  who,  from 
about  1890  to  1900,  made  himself  famous  and. 
even  created  a  fanatical  following  by  his  doc- 
trine and  by  his  practice  of  judging  in  de- 
fiance of  the  law  and  of  substituting  the  judge 
for  the  law   whenever   the   judge    (himself 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs        5 

namely)   considered  the  law  bad?     Are  you 
opposed  to  these  maxims  of  Montesquieu? 

The  nearer  a  government  approaches  to  a 
republic,  the  more  fixed  does  the  method  of 
judging  become.  It  was  a  vice  of  the  republic 
of  Sparta  that  the  ephors  judged  arbitrarily, 
without  having  laws  to  guide  them.  At  Rome 
the  first  consuls  judged  like  the  ephors  ;  the  dis- 
advantages of  the  method  were  felt  and  precise 
laws  were  made.  In  despotic  states  there  is  no 
law;  the  judge  is  himself  the  canon.  In  mon- 
archical states  there  is  a  law;  where  this  is 
precise  the  judge  follows  it,  and  where  it  is  not 
precise  he  seeks  the  spirit  of  it.  In  a  republican 
government  it  is  of  the  nature  of  the  constitution 
that  the  judges  follow  the  letter  of  the  law. 
There  is  not  a  single  citizen  against  whom  a  law 
can  be  interpreted  when  his  goods,  his  honour, 
or  his  life  is  in  question. 

I  do  not  dream  of  wishing  that  a  judge 
should  judge  in  equity,  and  I  think  it  a  good 
thing  that  he  should  judge  in  accordance 
with  a  precise  law.  I  only  wish  to  point  out 
that  everything  has  its  bad  side,  and  if 
judgment  by  the  text  has  incomparable 
advantages    (incomparable    I    think   is    the 


6      The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

word)  the  practice  of  judging  by  the  text  has 
also  this  drawback,  that  it  discharges  the 
judges  completely  from  moral  responsibility. 
It  leaves  them  responsible  for  having  under- 
stood or  failed  to  understand  the  law,  for 
having  been  successful  or  unsuccessful  in 
applying  the  law  to  the  case  or  the  case  to 
the  law,  and  for  failure  to  observe  the  forms; 
but  that  is  all  the  responsibility  it  leaves 
them.  In  a  word,  it  leaves  them  only  an 
intellectual  responsibility  and  it  discharges 
them  altogether  from  moral  responsibility. 
This  is  perhaps  only  the  drawback  of  a  great 
good,  but  it  is  a  great  drawback. 

Under  the  old  régime  the  laws  were  so 
complicated  and  so  confused  that  the  judges, 
while  resting  on  the  law  and  taking  a  good 
deal  of  pride  in  resting  on  nothing  else, 
and,  as  Montesquieu  said,  in  "having 
nothing  but  eyes,"  judged  in  very  large 
measure  in  equity.  The  result  was  that 
they  had  a  large  moral  responsibility.  They 
were  what  the  English  judges  still  are. 
English   law   is   only    jurisprudence,    a   col- 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs        7 

lection  of  precedents.  Through  these  pre- 
cedents, often  contradictory  as  may  be 
imagined,  the  English  judge  has  a  great 
latitude  of  interpretation,  of  theory,  of 
"doctrine,"  inspired  to  be  sure  by  the 
precedents,  but  freely  and  without  any 
ground  for  servility.  For  since  his  prede- 
cessors made  the  law  by  the  precedents 
they  left,  it  is  quite  legitimate  that  he  in 
turn  should  continue  to  make  it  by  the  mass 
of  decisions  which  he  works  out  and  leaves 
behind  him  as  fresh  precedent.  In  fact  the 
English  judges  have  been  legislators,  and, 
partially  but  in  large  part,  they  are  so  still. 
The  English  judge  is  rather  like  the 
Roman  praetor,  though  I  do  not  mean  to 
identify  the  two.  The  Roman  praetor  was 
not  only  a  man  who  laid  down  the  law;  he 
was  a  man  who  made  the  law.  When  he 
took  office  he  published  a  sort  of  legislative 
manifesto — edictum  prœtoris — in  which  he 
enounced  the  general  principles  of  law  which 
he  intended  to  follow.  The  praetors  thus 
created  successively  a  whole  body  of  law — 


8      The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

the  praetorian  law — which  was  much  more 
studied  at  Rome  in  the  time  of  Augustus, 
and  afterwards  until  Papinian,  than  the 
law  of  the  legislators,  and  which  was,  when 
all  is  said,  the  real  law  from  which  the 
whole  Roman  code  issued  later. 

I  need  not  say  that  law  thus  made  is  the 
most  vital  sort  of  law,  formed  as  it  is,  little 
by  little,  through  cases  and  the  application 
to  them  of  the  human  reason,  in  the  light  of 
analogous  cases  in  the  past,  and  not  born 
from  this  or  that  idea,  often  highly  a  priori, 
of  a  legislator. 

At  any  rate  the  Roman  praetors  were 
judge-legislators,  judges  who  both  declared 
and  made  the  law,  and  the  English  judges 
continue  to  resemble  them. 

Such  judges  have  an  enormous  responsi- 
bility; they  feel  it,  and  they  maintain  their 
sense  of  duty  to  justice  and  of  the  dignity 
of  their  office  by  this  very  consciousness  of 
responsibility.  They  feel  that  they  are 
judging  in  equity,  illuminated  by  acquaint- 
ance with  a  jurisprudence  which  is  extensive, 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs        9 

very  ancient,  venerable,  important,  which 
they  must  know  and  which  in  fact  they  do 
know,  consult,  consider,  revere.  But  they 
also  judge  to  a  considerable  degree  in  equity, 
that  is  by  reason,  and  their  reason  will  make 
a  contribution  to  the  law  of  the  land  they 
cherish.  They  are  traditionalists  in  two 
ways,  as  in  fact  everyone  must  be  if  he  is  not 
to  remain  only  half  a  traditionalist;  they 
are  traditionalists  backward  by  all  the 
tradition  of  which  they  are  the  result,  and 
forward  by  the  tradition  which  they  found. 

Yes,  all  that  must  develop  very  strongly 
and  confirm  in  them  a  deep  feeling  of  re- 
sponsibility. 

Such  are  the  prastors  of  Rome,  the  English 
judges,  the  judges  of  the  old  régime  in  France. 
Even  to-day  a  very  upright  judge  said  to  me  : 

"The  texts  are  so  numerous,  so  contra- 
dictory, and,  in  spite  of  their  apparent  rigid- 
ity, so  malleable,  that  it  is  always  possible  to 
judge  in  equity." 

"And  you  do?" 

"Never,  because  to  judge  in  equity  is  to 


io    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

assume  a  responsibility  which  nobody  cares 
to  undertake.  " 

"Fine!" 

"Perhaps." 

This  terror  of  responsibility  comes  out 
clearly  in  the  famous  passage  in  Beccaria. 
He  is  in  favour  of  judgment  by  the  letter,  of 
judgment  by  the  simple  juxtaposition  of 
the  case  at  bar  and  the  text  of  the  appropriate 
law,  of  a  judge  who  has  nothing  but  eyes. 
Why,  certainly,  and  I  have  no  idea  of  con- 
tradicting him,  but  notice  how  afraid  he  is  of 
judgment  by  the  spirit  of  the  law,  and  above 
all  note  the  grounds  of  his  fear: 

Nothing  is  more  dangerous  than  the  generally 
accepted  maxim, — consult  the  spirit  of  the  law. 
To  adopt  this  maxim  is  to  break  all  the  dikes 
and  toss  the  laws  to  the  tides  of  opinion.  Every 
man  sees  in  his  own  way;  the  spirit  of  a  law  is 
therefore  the  result  of  the  judge's  good  or  bad 
logic,  his  easy  or  laborious  digestion,  the  weak- 
ness of  the  defendant,  the  violence  of  the  passions 
of  the  magistrate,  his  relations  with  the  defend- 
ant, in  a  word,  of  all  the  little  causes  that  change 
appearances  and  denature  objects  for  a  man. 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      n 

If  we  adopted  this  principle,  we  should  have  a 
citizen's  mind  changing  as  he  passed  from  one 
court  to  another,  and  we  should  place  the  lives 
of  the  unfortunate  at  the  mercy  of  the  bad 
reasoning  or  bad  temper  of  the  judge.  We 
should  see  the  same  offences  treated  differently 
at  different  times  by  the  same  tribunal,  because, 
instead  of  listening  to  the  constant  and  invariable 
voice  of  law,  judges  would  yield  to  the  mislead- 
ing instability  of  arbitrary  interpretation. 

Nothing  is  more  true,  and  I  repeat  that  I 
prefer  the  passive  application  of  the  law, 
both  to  judgment  in  equity  and  even  to 
judgment  by  the  spirit  of  the  law;  but  note 
carefully  what  Beccaria  is  afraid  of — it  is 
the  intervention  of  the  judge  in  the  process. 
He  wants  the  judge  to  be  merely  a  registering 
machine  ;  he  does  not  want  him  to  be  a  man 
who  reasons,  who  digests,  who  has  passions, 
who  has  likings,  who  changes  his  mind. 
Very  good,  but  he  does  not  want  him  to  be 
a  man  sensible  to  the  shades  of  difference 
between  one  offence  and  another  which, 
according  to  the  text  of  the  law,  is  the  same, 
but  which  is  by  no  means  the  same  to  the 


12    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

eye  of  reason.  He  does  not  want  him  to 
weigh  circumstances,  to  weigh  the  greater 
or  less  danger  to  society.  In  a  word,  he 
does  not  want  him  to  have  a  critical  faculty, 
but  to  be  a  machine  for  pasting  the  texts 
upon  the  case. 

Why?  In  the  interests  of  the  defendant, 
answers  Beccaria's  phrase.  It  is  possible, 
but  still  more  in  the  interests  of  the  judge, 
who  is  thus  delivered  from  a  great  burden — 
that  of  judging.  What  does  he  want?  To 
be  irresponsible. 

Add  a  consideration  which  I  shall  be 
accused  of  repeating,  but  which  I  do  not 
think  that  I  can  repeat  often  enough.  Who 
selects  judges  in  France?  The  prince.  Who 
pays  them?  The  prince.  Who  favours  their 
advancement  or  leaves  them  indefinitely 
at  the  bottom  of  the  ladder?  The  prince. 
Then  the  "act  of  the  prince" — that  is,  the 
will  of  the  government — controls  them,  and 
they  judge  according  to  the  will  of  the 
government,  except  in  cases  in  which  the 
government    has    no    interest.     In    France 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      13 

there  is  but  one  word  for  it:  the  government 
is  the  judge. 

It  was  different  under  the  old  régime 
because  the  judges  had  a  proprietary  right 
to  their  office  and  were  therefore  independent  ; 
for  there  is  no  other  way  to  be  independent 
than  to  have  a  proprietary  right.  A  venal 
office  meant  an  independent  magistrate. 
We  all  know  how  Montesquieu  defended 
venality  and  how  Voltaire  attacked  him  for 
it. 

Montesquieu  said:  "Venal  offices  are  good 
in  monarchical  states  because  they  make  a 
family  profession  of  work  that  would  hardly 
be  undertaken  from  virtue." 

Voltaire  cries:  "What!  make  the  divine 
function  of  dispensing  justice,  of  disposing 
of  the  fortunes  and  lives  of  men,  a  family 
possession?" 

To  this  I  answer,  this  is  not  the  chief 
reason  that  Montesquieu  gave  for  his  opinion, 
but  even  this  reason  is  far  from  being  so 
inconsiderable  that  one  can  refute  it  by  a 
shrug    of    the    shoulders.     We    have    here 


14    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

simply  the  aristocratic  idea,  which  Voltaire, 
a  headstrong  despotist,  never  understood  in 
the  least.  Montesquieu  means:  venality 
places  a  judicial  appointment  in  a  family, 
and  you  have  a  series  of  judges  from  father 
to  son.  All  aristocracy  rests  on  that. 
Among  the  senators  of  Rome  and  the  senators 
of  Venice  the  divine  function  of  guarding 
the  interests  of  the  state  was  a  family  pro- 
fession, and  that  is  just  the  reason  why  it 
was  so  well  performed.  Does  it  surprise 
anyone  that  getting  one's  head  broken  on  the 
field  of  battle  is  a  family  profession?  It  is 
nothing  else  in  the  French  noble  class  and 
it  is  performed  brilliantly  enough.  There 
is  no  other  meaning,  but  there  is  all  this  in 
Montesquieu's  remark,  which  is  the  most 
natural  in  the  world  to  a  man  who  knows 
what  aristocracy  is. 

"This  venality,"  Montesquieu  goes  on  to 
say,  "makes  the  state  offices  more  per- 
manent. Suidas  observes  very  well  that 
Anastasius  made  the  empire  into  a  species  of 
aristocracy  by  selling  all  the  magistracies." 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      15 

Voltaire  does  not  notice  this  passage,  precisely 
because  it  contains  Montesquieu's  whole 
thought,  and  into  that  thought  Voltaire 
cannot  enter.  For  him  the  orders  of  the 
state  do  not  and  should  not  exist.  There 
should  be  nothing  but  an  absolute  monarch 
and  equal  subjects.  It  goes  without  saying 
that  consequently  whatever  creates  an  order 
that  is  a  bridle  to  the  fantasies  of  absolutism 
is  to  Montesquieu  a  good  thing,  to  Voltaire  a 
monstrosity.  And  if  Voltaire  does  not  quote 
this  important  text,  it  is  doubtless  because  he 
said  to  himself:  "Oh,  well,  that  is  Montes- 
quieu's aristocratic  hobby-horse.  We  needn't 
pay  any  attention  to  that.  Skip  it."  And 
it  was  much  easier  to  skip  than  thoroughly 
to  discuss  the  question  which  is  here  raised — 
whether,  namely,  aristocracy  is  a  good  form 
of  government  or  a  bad. 

Montesquieu  continues  by  recognising  that 
Plato  would  have  none  of  this  venality  and 
that  he  maintained  it  was  as  though  in  a  ship 
the  richest  man  should  be  made  pilot.  But 
he  bids  us  notice  that  Plato  is  speaking  as 


i6    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

a  citizen  of  a  republic,  and  he,  Montesquieu, 
as  a  subject  of  a  monarchy.  "Now  in  a 
monarchy,  where,  if  the  offices  are  not  sold 
by  public  regulation,  the  indigence  and  greed 
of  the  courtiers  would  sell  them  just  the 
same,  chance  will  make  better  selections 
than  the  prince." 

Here  Montesquieu  puts  his  finger  on  the 
very  point,  which  is  this:  we  have  to  choose 
between  venal  offices  and  venal  judges.  If 
the  judge  has  a  proprietary  right  to  his 
office  he  will  not  be  personally  for  sale; 
if  his  office  is  given  him,  he  will  be.  In  the 
first  place,  to  get  it  he  will  often  be  forced 
to  buy  it,  not  from  the  proprietor  since  there 
is  none,  but  from  the  minister  in  whose  gift 
it  is  or  from  the  people  who  influence  that 
minister.  And  then  to  keep  that  office  or  to 
acquire  a  better  and  more  lucrative  one,  he 
will  always  be  at  the  disposal  of  those  who  give 
such  things,  and  his  divine  function  becomes 
the  function  of  a  lackey.  We  must  choose 
between  venal  office  and  venal  (or  servile, 
which  is  the  same  thing)  magistrates. 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs       17 

Voltaire  replies,  it  seems  to  me,  quite 
obliquely,  as  he  always  does,  because  the 
real  question  escapes  him  or  because  to 
sound  it  to  the  bottom  is  repugnant  to  his 
natural  taste  for  the  surface. 

Why  [says  he]  is  France  the  only  monarchy 
in  the  universe  soiled  with  the  opprobrium  of 
this  venality  erected  to  a  law  of  the  state?  Why 
did  this  strange  abuse  wait  for  eleven  centuries 
to  appear?  It  is  well  known  that  the  monster 
was  born  of  a  king  both  poor  and  prodigal, 
and  of  the  vanity  of  certain  citizens  whose 
fathers  had  amassed  money.  This  abuse  has 
always  been  attacked  by  impotent  outcries, 
because  it  would  be  necessary  to  redeem  the 
offices  sold.  It  would  be  a  thousand  times 
better,  says  a  wise  jurisconsult,  to  sell  the 
treasures  of  all  the  convents  and  the  plate  of 
all  the  churches  than  to  sell  justice.  When 
Francis  I  took  the  silver  screen  of  St.  Martin  he 
injured  no  one.  St.  Martin  did  not  complain; 
he  got  along  very  well  without  his  screen.  But 
to  sell  publicly  the  office  of  a  judge  and  to  make 
that  judge  swear  that  he  did  not  buy  it  is  a  sacri- 
legious folly  which  has  been  one  of  our  fashions. 

If  we  subtract  the  conundrums  there 
is  nothing  left  of  this  passage  but  the  pro- 


i8    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

position:  it  is  monstrous  to  sell  justice.  But 
that  is  precisely  what  Montesquieu  said, 
that  to  buy  the  right  to  dispense  justice  is 
the  way  to  avoid  selling  it,  because  if  you 
buy  the  right  to  sell  it  you  are  the  proprietor 
of  this  right  and  have  no  longer  any  reason 
to  sell  your  decisions  and  you  do  not  sell 
them:  whereas  if  you  are  not  the  proprietor 
of  your  office  you  are  all  the  time  buying 
it,  by  rendering  decisions  agreeable  to  those 
in  whose  gift  it  is.  You  are  forever  buying, 
and  you  pay  in  decisions.  Either  venal 
offices  or  venal  judges. 

Voltaire  has  so  little  understanding  of  the 
question  that  he  terms  "selling  justice" 
precisely  the  process  which  keeps  decisions 
from  being  for  sale. 

As  for  his  very  just  remark  that  the  French 
monarchy  was  the  only  one  in  Europe  in 
which  the  magistrates  were  the  proprietors 
of  their  office — that  is  not  a  monstrosity,  it  is 
a  superiority.  That  amounts  to  saying 
that  the  magistracy  of  France  was  the  only 
one  in  Europe  that  was  an  order  of  the  state. 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      19 

In  every  other  country  the  magistracy  is  a 
corps  of  functionaries,  like  the  customs 
officers.  It  does  not  judge:  the  government 
judges  by  means  of  it.  In  those  countries 
there  is  no  separation  between  the  executive 
and  the  judiciary  powers,  and  that  (according 
to  the  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man  of 
1789,  article  16)  means  despotism.  But  to 
Voltaire  it  is  exactly  despotism  that  is  the 
true  form  of  government,  and  this  is  what 
separates  him  from  Montesquieu,  to  whom 
despotism  is  a  monster  and  who,  seeing  in  an 
independent  magistracy  a  curb  of  despotism, 
whatever  the  historic  origin  of  that  independ- 
ence, is  satisfied  to  have  the  magistracy 
independent. 

And  if  you,  scandalised,  should  tell  him 
that  this  is  the  case  nowhere  but  in  France, 
he  would  be  capable  of  replying  that  therein 
France  is  not  the  last  country  in  Europe 
but  the  first. 

"The  last!"  Voltaire  would  cry,  "because 
it  is  that  in  which  despotism  is  most  re- 
strained." 


20    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

"The  first!"  Montesquieu  would  answer, 
"because  it  is  that  in  which  there  is  the 
least  despotism." 

When  discussion  has  produced  its  only- 
result  by  bringing  each  of  the  disputants 
back  to  the  point  of  departure  of  all  his 
ideas,  it  stops. 

Montesquieu  adds  something  else  on  this 
same  subject  to  which  Voltaire  made  no  reply. 
"Finally,  the  method  of  advancement  by 
wealth  inspires  and  supports  industry,  a 
thing  much  needed  by  this  form  of  govern- 
ment [monarchy].  'Idle  as  a  Spaniard'  is  a 
proverb:  offices  are  all  gifts  in  Spain." 

This  needs  explanation  because  it  is  badly 
expressed.  Montesquieu  means:  a  father  is 
a  manufacturer  and  makes  a  fortune;  if  he 
applied  himself  to  succeed  it  was  in  order 
that  he  might  buy  a  judgeship  for  his  son  and 
thereby  advance  him  in  the  social  hierarchy. 
This  is  an  excellent  stimulus  to  industry.  In 
countries  where  men  do  not  advance  by 
this  means  from  one  class  to  a  higher  one 
they  do  not  work,  they  intrigue.     In  Spain 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      21 

all  the  offices  are  gifts,  therefore  nobody 
works  to  buy  them.  "Idle  as  a  Spaniard." 
And,  as  happens  to  men  who  keep  all  their 
ideas  in  sight  at  once,  Montesquieu  gives 
here  the  general  idea  of  the  whole  régime. 
The  greatest  countries  of  the  world  are  those 
in  which  there  is  an  aristocracy,  very  tradi- 
tional but  always  open,  always  being  rejuven- 
ated by  recruits  from  the  active  and  energetic 
sections  of  the  lower  classes.  Now  in  France 
there  are  three  aristocracies:  the  nobility, 
the  least  open  but  still  open,  since  the  king 
can  and  does  create  nobles;  the  clergy, 
absolutely  open  because  it  is  recruited  not 
by  heredity  but  by  cooptation — that  is  to 
say,  by  a  sort  of  elective  heredity;  and  the 
magistracy,  which  is  partly  hereditary,  partly 
purchasable  by  men  who  have  made  money 
by  work.  These  three  aristocratic  orders 
form  together  an  aristocracy  which,  being 
very  open,  consists  literally  of  the  best.  No 
country  is  more  intelligently  and  fortunately 
aristocratic  than  France.  It  is  the  first 
country  in  the  world. 


22    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

This  is  what  Voltaire  has  not  answered, 
because  as  soon  as  it  was  a  question  of  the 
doctrine  of  aristocracy,  he  ceased  to  under- 
stand. But  it  is  easy  to  see  the  whole  body 
of  Montesquieu's  ideas  about  venal  offices. 

Mirabeau  was  to  say  later,  "There  should 
be  no  classes  in  a  state  but  beggars,  robbers, 
and  the  salaried.  "  This  is  the  pure  doctrine 
of  socialism.  It  excludes  the  independent 
proprietor  and  worker  because  they  are  not 
beggars  nor  robbers  nor  drawers  of  salaries. 
There  are  to  be  no  more  independent  workers  ; 
workers  there  will  be,  but  they  will  be  in  the 
pay  of  the  state. 

To  this  doctrine  Montesquieu  would  have 
replied  in  advance: 

Exactly:  but  I  who  am  not  a  socialist,  who  do 
not  want  a  government  that  does  everything, 
that  can  do  anything,  and  on  which  everything 
depends, — I,  who  want  a  government  limited  by 
personal  freedom,  must  have  independent  work- 
men with  their  eye  on  property,  who  acquire 
property  and  by  its  means  acquire  social  func- 
tions which  they  have  won  and  not  received  as  a 
gift  from  the  state, — functions  independent  of 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      23 

the  state.  For  example,  the  magistracy  achieved 
by  industry  and  labour  is  one.  My  magis- 
trates, a  great  social  power,  will  not  be  beggars 
nor  robbers  nor  drawers  of  salaries.  I  insist 
on  the  absence  of  salary  because  if  they  were 
salaried  they  would  be  beggars.  Now  beggars 
can  judge  very  well;  but  in  cases  in  which  the 
government  is  in  conflict  with  a  private  person, 
those  receiving  assistance  from  the  government 
will  exercise  a  perhaps  incomplete  impartiality. 

These  ideas  of  Montesquieu  were  sup- 
ported, three  years  after  the  publication  of 
the  Esprit  des  Lois,  in  an  almost  original 
way  and  with  more  precision  and  vigour  than 
by  Montesquieu  himself,  by  a  young  man  who 
was  to  have  an  adventurous  and  thwarted 
future,  but  who  at  twenty-five  promised  well, 
Angliviel  de  La  Beaumelle.  In  his  first  work, 
Mes  Pensées,  La  Beaumelle  said  : 

The  sale  of  offices  made  all  good  Frenchmen 
murmur.  It  was  introduced  by  the  avarice  of 
princes  and  the  necessity  of  the.  time;  the  same 
causes  have  continued  and  now  maintain  it. 
I  am  sorry,  for  the  honour  of  political  science, 
that  venality  was  not  its  work;  it  would  have 
been  one  of  its  masterpieces.     It  is  an  admirable 


24    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

thing  that  there  should  be  a  nation  in  which 
the  right  to  judge  is  sold  and  where  judgments 
are  not  bought,  where  industry  is  encouraged  by 
office  [Montesquieu's  text  appears  again]  and 
where  office  is  not  abased  [and  cannot  be,  since 
power  has  no  hold  on  it].  This  venality  of 
judicial  offices  is  one  of  the  greatest  advantages 
of  the  policy  of  France. 

The  revolution  annexed  the  magistracy  to 
the  central  power,  and  that  means  that  it 
suppressed  that  order  of  the  state  as  it  did 
the  two  centres;  and  it  means  also  that  it 
decided  that  thereafter  it  should  be  the 
executive  power  that  judged.  It  was  a  great 
step  in  advance  if  it  is  towards  despotism 
that  we  are  steering,  as  I  believe  we  are; 
it  was  a  great  retrogression  if  liberty  is  our 
aim. 

Now  to  return  to  that  question  of  re- 
sponsibility from  which,  as  we  shall  see,  we 
really  have  not  strayed;  from  the  point  of 
view  of  responsibility  what  has  the  new 
régime  accomplished?  To  one  irresponsi- 
bility it  has  added  another.  The  judges 
of  the  old  régime  were  less  covered  than  those 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      25 

of  the  new  because,  though  they  judged,  it  is 
true,  according  to  the  law,  they  did  so  much 
less  strictly  than  those  of  the  new,  as  we 
have  shown.  The  judges  of  the  present 
régime  are  absolutely  covered  by  the  law,  and 
the  law  is  more  precise,  more  multiple,  less 
susceptible  of  interpretation.  They  have 
simply  to  declare  the  law  and  it  is  the  law 
that  is  responsible.  Now  to  this  irrespon- 
sibility another  is  added:  since  these  judges 
are  the  government  engaged  in  judging, 
when  the  government  tells  them  to  judge 
in  a  certain  manner  they  must  judge  in  that 
manner,  and  it  is  the  government,  not  they, 
that  is  responsible. 

You  remember  that  high  magistrate  who, 
when  questioned  before  a  committee  of 
Parliament  concerning  a  procedure  perfectly 
contrary  to  law,  replied,  "the  act  of  the 
prince!"  He  was  judged  severely  by  public 
opinion.  Why?  He  had  done  nothing  but 
relieve  himself  of  a  responsibility  by  placing 
it  where  it  belongs  according  to  the  present 
system.    He  might  have  said  :    '  '  We  received 


26    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

an  order  from  the  government  and  we  obeyed 
that  order.  Is  it  a  felony?  Wherein?  Are 
we  an  order  of  the  state?  Not  at  all.  Are 
we  the  people  itself  judging,  like  the  heliasts 
of  Athens?  Not  at  all.  Are  we  delegates  of 
the  senate  or  of  the  knights,  as  were  succes- 
sively the  judges  of  Rome,  and  therefore  re- 
presentatives of  an  order  of  the  states?  Not 
at  all.  Are  we,  as  again  at  Rome,  prastors 
named  by  the  people?  Not  at  all.  We  are 
appointed,  paid,  promoted,  or  left  behind  by 
the  government.  The  government  judges 
by  means  of  us  ;  we  are  merely  instruments. 
When  it  wants  to  judge  itself,  that  is  evidently 
its  right,  and  from  the  moment  it  exercises  it 
we  have  only  to  keep  still.  Because  of  the 
method  by  which  we  are  made  what  we  are, 
we  feel  ourselves  absolutely  irresponsible. 
In  the  time  of  the  first  dynasty  in  France,  if 
the  provost  had  summoned  someone  to  appear 
who  had  failed  to  do  so,  the  provost  went  to 
him  and  said,  '  I  sent  to  find  you  and  you 
did  not  deign  to  come;  give  me  satisfaction 
for  your  contempt.'    And  they  fought.     Men 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      27 

felt  terribly  responsible  in  those  days.  Do 
you  think  this  is  the  way  we  should  act 
towards  the  government  when  it  commands 
and  we  do  not  find  its  order  agreeable? 
What  right  have  we?  We  cannot  say  to  it 
'  who  made  you  prince?  '  And  it  can  say  to 
us,  'who  made  you  judges?'  We  have  de- 
pendent power,  delegated  power,  and  our 
power  may  be  recalled  at  any  time  by  the 
hand  that  lent  it  to  us.  We  are  dependent 
by  definition  and  therefore  irresponsible,  and 
we  are  charmed  to  be  so,  for  we  have  not 
the  point  of  honour  of  the  provosts  of  the 
middle  ages." 

Here  is  another  example  of  the  feeling  of 
their  irresponsibility  which  French  magis- 
trates evidently  entertain  as  soon  as  they 
have  to  consider  a  matter  into  which  politics 
enters.  A  letter  from  the  French  bishops  to 
the  faithful  in  19 10  advises  families  against 
the  secular  schools  for  a  number  of  reasons, 
and  among  others  for  this,  that  there  are 
secular  schools  in  which  little  boys  and 
little  girls  are  together  not  only  in  class  and 


28    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

for  study  but  in  recreation.  Suit  was 
brought  by  some  teachers'  society  against 
Mgr.  Cardinal  Luçon,  who  signed  the  letter. 
The  teachers  won  in  the  first  instance.  An 
appeal  was  taken.  The  court  of  appeal — the 
Court  of  Paris,  January  14,  191 1 — decided 
again  against  Cardinal  Luçon.  One  of  its 
considerations  was  this  : 

Considering  that  they  [the  allegations  contained 
in  the  letter  of  the  bishops]  add  specially  for  the 
case  of  the  mixed  schools  that  children  of  both 
sexes  are  permitted  to  mingle,  whereas  the 
appellant  [Cardinal  de  Luçon]  is  aware  that  in 
class  as  in  recreation  the  boys  and  the  girls  are 
separated,  that  no  schoolhouse  is  built  and 
accepted  unless   it   fulfils   this   condition.  .  .  . 

By  the  text  of  this  consideration — "where- 
as the  appellant  is  aware" — the  Court  of 
Paris  formally  taxed  Mgr.  Cardinal  Luçon 
with  lying,  and  it  condemned  him  as  a  liar. 
The  newspaper  The  Cross  immediately  made 
an  inquiry  (January,  191 1)  to  learn  whether 
there  were  really  mixed  secular  schools  in 
which  the  two  sexes  were  together.     They 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      29 

found  only  two  hundred,  which  they  named 
with  details. 

There  was  one  curious  detail.  In  the 
majority  of  the  communes  where  the  thing 
occurred,  matters  were  arranged  in  this  way  : 
the  man-teacher  took  the  big  boys  and  girls 
and  the  woman- teacher  the  little  ones,  so 
that  the  division  was  made,  as  if  by  design, 
on  the  most  dangerous  possible  lines.  Of 
course  it  was  only  absurd,  there  was  no 
bad  intention.  But  as  a  fact,  that  was 
the  condition. 

In  any  case  the  mingling  took  place  and 
Mgr.  Luçon  had  not  been  a  liar  and  the 
Court  of  Paris  had  falsely  called  him  one. 
Before  so  lightheartedly  declaring  Mgr. 
Luçon  a  liar,  what  should  the  Court  of 
Paris  have  done?  It  should  have  made  an 
investigation  to  see  whether  he  was  lying, 
the  very  investigation  that  The  Cross  made 
afterward.  Why  did  it  not  make  this  in- 
quiry? Why  was  it  contented — as  from  its 
utterance  it  evidently  was — with  plans  of 
schoolhouses  handed  to    it  by  the  minister 


30    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

of  public  instruction?  As  if  those  plans 
proved  anything  about  the  use  of  houses 
built  after  them;  as  if  the  reservation  of 
part  of  a  house  for  the  man-teacher  and 
part  for  the  woman-teacher  prevented  the 
man-teacher  from  taking  into  his  part  all 
the  older  children  without  distinction  of 
sex  and  leaving  the  younger  ones  without 
distinction  of  sex  to  the  woman- teacher, 
which  is  just  what  frequently  happened! 
I  ask  again,  why  did  not  the  Court  of 
Paris  make  this  inquiry,  and  why  did  it 
so  lightly  declare  Mgr.  Luçon  a  liar? 

Because  when  a  matter  of  politics  is  in 
question,  a  French  court  feels  no  longer 
responsible.  It  thinks  that  in  such  cases  it 
is  the  government  that  ought  to  judge 
and  it  should  be  nothing  but  its  speaking- 
trumpet. 

It  seems  to  me  that  in  this  case  we  catch 
this  practice  in  the  act,  for  the  procedure 
of  the  court  is  clear.  There  is  a  question 
of  fact  and  therefore  an  inquiry  to  be 
made.     It  does  not  make   it,    but   because 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      31 

the  matter  is  political  it  regards  it  as  con- 
cerning the  government.  It  says  it  is  for 
the  government  to  speak  and  it  consults 
the  department  of  public  instruction.  The 
department  of  public  instruction  replies, 
"Legends,  fables,  mythology;  here  are  plans 
of  schoolhouses,  you  see  that  it  is  physically 
impossible  for  the  two  sexes  to  be  mingled." 
"Evidently,"  replies  the  court.  Why  does  it 
say  evidently?  Why  doesn't  it  ask  whether 
in  spite  of  the  plans  there  is  not  actually 
somewhere  the  mingling  which,  theoreti- 
cally, is  impossible?  Because  it  believes 
that  the  government  has  judged.  It  was  a 
political  question;  it  concerned  the  govern- 
ment; and  the  opinion  or  the  desire  or  the 
caprice  or  the  tendency  of  the  government 
determined  the  decision.  The  court  had 
nothing  to  do  but  to  write  it  out.  Mgr. 
Luçon  had  lied  because  the  government 
seemed  to  desire  a  declaration  that  Mgr. 
Luçon  was  a  liar.  The  irresponsibility  of 
the  bench  in  every  political  question  seems 
to  be  a  principle  of  law  for  the  magistracy 


32    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

of  France  in  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth 
centuries. 

There  is  more — or  just  as  much — in  the 
same  case.  Mgr.  Luçon  had  produced  in 
his  defence  an  opinion  of  Maître  Hannotin, 
advocate  of  the  Council  of  State  and  of  the 
Court  of  Cassation,  and  it  is  on  this  very 
opinion  of  Maître  Hannotin  that  the  deci- 
sion of  the  Court  of  Paris  of  January  4,  191 1, 
rests  to  condemn  Mgr.  Luçon.  In  order  to 
rest  on  it  the  decision  cites  it,  and  this  is 
the  way  it  rests  on  what  it  cites: 

Considering  also  that  the  opinion  produced  in 
his  name  [the  name  of  Mgr.  Luçon]  declares 
that  "in  the  village  schools  the  girls  and  the 
boys  are  carefully  separated";  and  that  thus  by 
this  article  of  the  defence  itself  the  denuncia- 
tion [contained  in  the  bishops'  letter  relating 
to  the  mingling  of  the  sexes  in  the  mixed 
schools]  is  acknowledged  to  be  inexact  and 
unjust.  .  .  . 

Now  did  Maître  Hannotin  say  that  in  his 
opinion?  Did  he  say  that  in  the  village 
schools  the  girls  and  the  boys  are  carefully 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      33 


'S 


separated?  If  he  had  said  that,  he  would 
have  been  making  a  queer  defence  for  Mgr. 
Luçon.  What  would  he  have  said  if  he  had 
been  attacking  him?  However  it  is  possible 
that  he  did  say  it.  The  force  of  truth  some- 
times drags  a  bit  of  accusation  from  the 
defence  and  a  bit  of  defence  from  the  pro- 
secution. It  is  possible  that  he  said  it,  but 
did  he? 

Good  heavens,  he  said  exactly  the  con- 
trary.    He  said: 

What  the  pastoral  letter  has  in  view  is  not  the 
village  school  in  which  a  single  teacher,  man 
or  woman,  teaches  at  the  same  time  girls  and 
boys  carefully  separated  from  each  other;  it 
is  the  school  where  intentionally,  systematically 
the  two  sexes  are  mingled. 

This  is  what  Maître  Hannotin  said.  He 
put  to  one  side,  from  scrupulous  precision 
and  also  from  justice,  the  poor  little  village 
schools  where  the  teacher,  man  or  woman, 
teaching  six  little  boys  and  four  little  girls, 
is  of  necessity  only  one  person,  but  still  can 
maintain  a  separation,  whether  in  class  or  in 


34    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

recreation,  and  does  in  fact  maintain  it.  He 
had  seen  the  schools,  very  numerous  as  ap- 
peared from  the  inquiry  of  The  Cross,  where 
intentionally,  systematically  (why?  for  their 
personal  convenience),  the  teachers,  though 
there  were  two  of  them,  mingled  the 
sexes,  the  woman  taking  the  younger  boys 
and  girls  and  the  man  taking  the  older 
ones. 

Now  what  does  the  court  do?  It  isolates 
the  phrase  in  which  Maître  Hannotin  con- 
cedes what  he  ought  to,  and  it  takes  no 
account  of  the  phrase  in  which  his  criticism 
lies.  And  it  concludes  that  he  acknowledged 
that  the  sexes  are  rigorously  separated  in  the 
schools;  and  it  gives  us  to  understand  that 
he  acknowledged  that  in  all  the  schools  the 
sexes  are  rigorously  separated.  Note  again 
that  to  come  to  this  conclusion  and  to  con- 
vey this  impression  the  court  was  obliged  to 
alter  the  text  which  it  puts  in  quotation- 
marks,  so  that  the  quotation  is  not  only 
truncated  but  changed.  For  the  quotation 
reads,  "In  the  village  school  the   girls   and 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      35 

boys  are  carefully  separated."  The  text  of 
Maître  Hannotin  was, 

What  the  pastoral  letter  has  in  view  is  not  the 
village  school  in  which  a  single  teacher,  man  or 
woman,  teaches  at  the  same  time  girls  and  boys 
carefully  separated  from  each  other;  it  is  the 
school  where  .  .  . 

the  contrary  takes  place.  So  that  in  place  of 
a  verbal  form  indicating  by  itself  that  there 
are  irreproachable  schools  and  that  there  are 
others  to  be  severely  condemned,  the  court 
substitutes  a  verbal  form  which-  affirms  that 
all  the  schools  are  irreproachable. 

Thus  by  isolating  a  passage  and,  in  addi- 
tion, altering  it,  they  end  by  making  a  man 
who  said  "yes"  say  "no."  There  are 
occasions,  which  unfortunately  increase  in 
number,  when  I  regret  that  I  am  not  Pascal. 

At  this  point  some  people  grow  warm  and 
say  that  the  judges  of  France  have  no  moral 
sense.  That  is  a  complete  mistake.  They 
have  as  much  moral  sense  as  anyone,  but 
they  have  a  peculiar  conception  of  their 
office.     They    consider    the    bench    as    an 


36    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

organ  of  the  government,  as  forming  a  part 
of  it.  The  bench  is  appointed  by  the  govern- 
ment, it  is  paid  by  it,  it  forms  part  of  it;  it  is 
the  government  that  judges.  Therefore  in 
every  cause  in  which  the  government  is  not 
concerned,  the  bench  judges  justly  and 
according  to  law  ;  but  in  every  cause  in  which 
the  government  is  concerned,  it  judges  ac- 
cording to  the  opinion  of  the  government 
and  after  having  as  a  preliminary  asked, 
received  or  assumed  that  opinion.  It  is  not 
the  bench,  according  to  its  own  views,  that 
can  judge  in  such  a  cause;  it  is  the  real 
power,  using  the  judiciary  simply  as  its 
mouthpiece. 

It  will  be  objected  that  this  is  the  same 
as  saying  that  the  government  is  never  made 
judge  except  when  it  is  both  judge  and  party. 
Why,  of  course.  When  it  is  not  a  party  it 
can  let  others  judge  in  its  stead,  but  when  it 
is  a  party  it  does  the  judging  itself  because 
other  judges  might  decide  against  it,  which 
is  inadmissible.  Who  says  that?  I,  the 
bench;  since  I  am  part  of  the  government, 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      37 

I  do  not  admit  that  the  government  is  ever 
in  the  wrong,  because  I  am  the  government. 
You  can't  ask  me  to  condemn  myself. 

But  it  follows  that  in  every  case  where 
an  individual  or  a  group  of  individuals  is 
opposed  to  the  state,  he  or  it  is  beaten  in 
advance. 

Evidently. 

Would  it  not  be  better  if  it  were  otherwise? 

Perhaps,  but  to  have  it  otherwise  we  should 
have  to  create  a  power  between  the  state  and 
the  individual.  That  is  just  what  does  not 
exist.  What  has  been  created  is  a  confusion 
between  the  judiciary  and  the  executive 
powers;  it  is  the  executive  as  judge.  Well, 
it  judges  very  well  in  every  case  that  does 
not  touch  it,  and  in  every  case  that  touches 
it,  it  decides  for  itself.  And  we,  being  con- 
founded with  it,  being  it,  we  beg  it  purely 
and  simply  to  judge  in  our  stead.  And  it 
would  be  the  childish  sport  of  petty  journal- 
ists to  reproach  us  with  the  singularity  of  our 
reasoning  in  political  cases.  As  soon  as  a 
case  comes  up  in  which  the  government  is 


38    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

concerned,  understand  that  we  are  no  longer 
magistrates,  we  are  officers  of  the  king,  we 
are  the  government  judging,  that  is  to  say, 
defending  itself.  And  our  opinions  are  then 
nothing  more  than  the  remarks  of  a  minister 
without  portfolio,  defending  the  policy  of 
the  ministry  of  which  he  is  part;  no  one  is 
going  to  reproach  such  an  one  with  his  para- 
logisms, his  sophisms,  his  mutilated  citations, 
his  alterations  of  texts  and  his  inversions. 

This  is  very  good  reasoning,  but  what  does 
it  amount  to?  It  amounts  to  the  light- 
hearted  transfer  by  the  judges  of  judicial 
responsibility  from  their  shoulders  to  the 
shoulders  of  government,  at  least  in  all  cases 
in  which  the  government  is  interested.  The 
magistrate  of  the  new  régime  scores  off  the 
magistrate  of  the  old  by  having  one  responsi- 
bility the  less.  Remark,  if  you  remember 
what  was  said  above,  that  we  have  a  total 
of  two  responsibilities  the  less.  That  is, 
two  irresponsibilities  for  the  bench:  irre- 
sponsibility resulting  from  a  strict  appli- 
cation of  the  law,  from  automatic  justice; 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      39 


'& 


and  irresponsibility  resulting  from  depend- 
ence, from  a  breakdown  of  autonomy  in 
relation  to  the  central  power. 

It  would  naturally  happen  that  these  two 
irresponsibilities  are  superimposed  one  upon 
the  other.  It  also  happens  sometimes  that 
they  conflict.  A  conflict  of  irresponsibilities, 
a  conflict  not  of  duties  but  of  non-duties  is  a 
curious  thing.  It  has  been  seen  in  a  perfect 
instance.  In  July,  1906,  the  Court  of  Cas- 
sation decided  for  the  second  time  the  case  of 
Captain  Dreyfus.  According  to  the  law,  if 
this  court  finds  that  the  case  was  wrongly 
decided  by  the  second  court-martial,  it  can 
do  nothing  but  send  it  before  a  third  court- 
martial.  It  is  true  there  is  an  article  (445 
of  the  Criminal  Code)  which  admits  of  final 
decision,  but  it  only  applies,  when  the 
defendant  is  still  living,  to  cases  in  which 
there  no  longer  exists  anything  that  can 
be  termed  crime  or  offence.  For  instance, 
if  I  have  been  accused  of  killing  Paul  and 
have  been  found  guilty,  and  if  it  is  proved 
later  that  Paul  committed  suicide,  there  is 


40    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

no  longer  anything  which,  in  regard  to  me  or 

anyone  else,  can  be  termed  crime  or  offence. 

Now  this  article  did  not  apply  to  the  Dreyfus 

case  because,  while  it  was  possible  that  M. 

Dreyfus  was  innocent,  it  was  incontestable 

that  an  act  of  treason  had  been  committed 

in  1 894  ;  no  one  did  contest  it  and  it  remained  in 

the  case.    Again,  as  M.  Dreyfus  was  living,  the 

exception  allowed  by  article  445  did  not  exist. 

And  for  all  these  reasons  the  only  lawful 

course  of  the  Court  of  Cassation  was  to  send 

M.    Dreyfus   before   a   third    court-martial. 

This  is  what  the  attorney-general,  M.  Manan, 

said  at  the  time  of  the  first  revision,  although 

he  was  favourable  to  M.  Dreyfus: 

In  order  for  it  to  be  possible  in  the  first  place  for 
us  [the  public  prosecutor]  and  in  the  next  place 
for  you  [the  court]  to  pronounce  Dreyfus  inno- 
cent, Dreyfus  would  have  to  be  dead.  The  law 
leaves  no  doubt  in  that  respect.  It  is  enough 
to  know  the  law,  and  to  know  the  law  it  is  only 
necessary  to  read  it. 

The  only  courses  open,  then,  to  the  Court 
of  Cassation,  were  either  not  to  reverse  or  to 
reverse  with  new  trial. 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      41 

But  the  government  had  had  enough  of 
that  interminable  affair  and  had  no  need 
to  say  so  to  the  Court  of  Cassation.  The 
court  knew  it  as  everybody  else  did. 

Now  do  you  see  the  conflict  of  the  two 
irresponsibilities?  If  the  court  conforms 
to  the  law  it  is  irresponsible.  "I  am  covered 
by  the  law,  pitch  into  the  law  then.  I  wash 
my  hands  of  my  decision  for  it  is  the  law,  not 
I,  that  decides."  If  the  Court,  in  obedience 
to  the  government  or  to  the  desires  of  the 
government,  is  not  obedient  to  the  law,  it 
is  irresponsible  just  the  same.  "I  am  the 
agent  of  the  government;  I  wash  my  hands 
of  my  decisions  ;  it  is  government  that  makes 
them  through  my  mouth,  not  I." 

"But  it  perverts  the  law,  which  is  no  more 
permitted  to  government  than  to  you,  since 
it  is  permitted  to  no  one." 

"That  may  be,  but  say  so  to  government, 
not  to  me." 

So  the  court  was  very  much  at  its  ease. 
But  not  entirely  so,  because,  in  this  strange 
conflict,  if  it  was  surrounded  by  irresponsi- 


42    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

bility  on  all  sides  it  was  nevertheless  necessary 
that,  in  form,  it  should  satisfy  every- 
body, both  the  law  and  the  prince;  for  al- 
though the  judiciary  in  the  new  régime  is 
only  the  agent  of  the  prince,  it  is  required 
by  law  to  judge  by  law. 

Thus,  wishing  to  reverse  without  new  trial, 
although  according  to  the  law  it  could  only 
reverse  with  new  trial,  it  had  the  happy 
thought  of  basing  its  action  in  reversing 
without  new  trial  on  the  very  text  by  which 
the  law  forbade  it  to  do  so.  But  for  that 
purpose  it  had  to  pervert  the  law,  and  it  did 
so  in  a  very  ingenious  way.  Instead  of 
citing  article  445  as  it  stands,  "If  the  re- 
versal of  the  sentence  in  the  case  where  the 
condemned  is  living  leaves  nothing  further 
that  can  be  qualified  as  crime  or  offence,  no 
new  trial  will  be  ordered,"  it  cites  it  thus, 
"If  the  reversal  of  the  sentence  leaves  noth- 
ing charged  against  the  condemned  which 
can  be  qualified  as  crime  or  offence,  no  new 
trial  will  be  ordered." 

You   see   the  discrepancies.     In   the  first 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      43 

place,  the  text  of  the  decision  has  "charged 
against  the  condemned,"  instead  of  "where 
the  condemned  is  living,  "  which  is  not  at  all 
the  same  thing. 

Thus  the  court  applied  a  law  which  it 
invented.  The  defenders  themselves  of  M. 
Dreyfus  recognise  this  and  they  only  say, 
perhaps  correctly,  that  quieting  measures 
were  necessary  and  that  the  action  of  the 
Court  of  Cassation  was  successful  in  that 
character.  It  is  possible.  Its  decision  re- 
vived the  discussion  but  it  avoided  a  third 
court-martial,  and  may  thus  have  been  a 
little  more  quieting  than  it  was  disturbing. 
But  it  had  two  results  which  were  probably 
not  aimed  at.  First,  for  all  time,  for  all 
history,  it  left  the  Dreyfus  affair  open  instead 
of  closing  it.  Secondly,  it  condemned  Dreyfus. 

It  left  the  Dreyfus  affair  open  for  all 
history,  instead  of  closing  it.  In  fact, 
people  can  go  on  saying  forever:  M.  Dreyfus 
was  found  guilty  by  two  courts-martial, 
the  case  having  been  sent  back  by  the  Court 
of   Cassation,    and    then   he   was   acquitted 


44    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

by  the  Court  of  Cassation  but  by  an  avowed 
alteration  of  the  law.  The  things  at  least 
balance  and  the  case  remains  open.  It  can 
be  discussed  indefinitely.  And  in  fact  my 
opinion  is  that  it  will  be  discussed  indefinitely 
and  quite  legitimately  so,  considering  the 
last  decision  of  the  Court  of  Cassation  and 
the  fashion  in  which  it  was  rendered. 

And  the  Court  of  Cassation  by  its  last 
decision  condemned  M.  Dreyfus.  Yes,  cer- 
tainly ;  for  by  its  decision,  contradicting  both 
the  spirit  and  the  letter  of  the  law,  and 
imposed  solely  by  the  wish  that  M.  Dreyfus 
might  not  appear  before  a  third  court- 
martial,  it  declared  two  things:  first,  that  a 
reversal  without  new  trial  could  not  be 
arrived  at  without  an  alteration  of  the  law, 
which  is  a  very  explicit  moral  condemnation; 
and  second,  that  in  the  judgment  of  the 
court,  any  court-martial  before  which  he 
might  be  brought  would  infallibly  find  him 
guilty  again,  which  is  an  even  more  explicit 
moral  condemnation. 

By  its  decision  the  court  says  very  clearly, 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      45 

"The  law  will  have  it  that  M.  Dreyfus  be 
tried  again  by  a  court-martial,  but  since  he 
would  be  found  guilty  by  any  court-martial, 
I  acquit  him,  in  spite  of  the  law."  It  is  a 
crying  condemnation.  So  crying,  you  notice, 
that  M.  Dreyfus  has  not  merely  been  found 
guilty  by  two  courts-martial;  the  Court 
of  Cassation  represents  him  as  found  guilty 
in  advance  by  every  possible  court-martial, 
and  so,  to  keep  him  from  appearing  before 
any  court-martial  whatever,  it  acquits  him. 
If  it  had  meant  to  say,  "I  declare  that  M. 
Dreyfus  will  always  be  found  guilty,"  it 
could  not  have  gone  about  it  otherwise.  A 
humourist  might  say  :  "The  Court  of  Cassa- 
tion was  animated  by  the  most  hostile  inten- 
tions against  M.  Dreyfus,  for  it  has  cried  to 
the  universe  by  its  decision  that  it  was  not 
possible  for  him  to  be  acquitted."  That  is  not 
the  case;  the  court  was  not  hostile  to  M.  Drey- 
fus, but  it  must  be  admitted  that  it  might  be 
thought  so.  The  fact  remains  that  it  con- 
demned him  morally  as  far  as  lay  in  its  power. 
This  is  so  true  that,  as  is  known,  while 


46    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

peaceful  people  were  satisfied  with  the 
decision,  the  thick-and-thin  Dreyfusists  were 
outraged  by  it.  They  felt  strongly  what 
I  have  been  saying,  that  the  case  was  only 
reopened  without  the  possibility  of  ever 
being  closed,  and  that  an  acquittal  based  on 
such  artifices  and  on  such  an  avowal  that  it 
could  be  procured  in  no  other  way,  amounted 
to  a  rather  cruel  conviction.  The  decision 
of  July  12,  1906,  is  a  piece  of  judicial  sleight 
of  hand,  and  an  incomparably  awkward  one. 
Now,  is  it  the  Court  of  Cassation  that  per- 
formed the  feat  of  prestidigitation  and  did  it 
clumsily?  Not  the  least  in  the  world.  It  is  the 
government.  It  is  the  government,  which  from 
the  month  of  July,  1899,  intended  to  impose 
on  the  judges  of  M.  Dreyfus,  whoever  they 
were,  a  verdict  of  acquittal,  as  we  see  from  the 
letter  of  M.  Gallifet,  Minister  of  War,  to  M. 
Waldeck-Rousseau,  President  of  the  Council. 

Monday,  July  io,  1899. 

My  dear  President  and  Friend, 

You  have  found  too  "open"  [according  to  the 
context  this  probably  means  "leaving  too  free 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      47 


'& 


a  hand"]  the  instructions  that  I  was  disposed 
to  give  to  the  government-commissioner  on  the 
Rennes  court-martial.  I  myself  thought  them 
too  closed  [probably  '  '  too  strict  "].  For  two  days 
I  have  been  giving  all  my  attention  to  this 
affair,  and  for  reasons  which  I  give  you  in  this 
letter  I  have  resolved  not  to  send  any  instruc- 
tions at  all,  which  is  conformable  to  usage,  and 
which  has  been  the  practice  since  the  Bazaine 
case  for  example.  Believe  me  when  I  declare 
that  what  would  be  useful  in  dealing  with  civil 
magistrates  is  harmful  in  the  case  of  govern- 
ment-commissioners, of  presidents  of  courts- 
martial  and  of  military  judges.  If  we  take  a 
hand  in  the  matter  in  any  way  whatever  I  am 
convinced  that  we  shall  bring  about  a  conviction. 
I  am  so  sure  of  it  that  I  shall  take  good  care  not 
to  work  for  it.  The  judges  of  the  court-martial 
as  well  as  the  government-commissioner  have 
been  lectured  by  their  comrades.  "Don't  pay 
attention  to  any  advice,  any  order,"  they  have 
told  them;  "they  will  be  so  many  snares  laid  by 
the  government."  They  have  all  lost  their 
balance  in  this  connection.  Our  instructions 
would  not  be  kept  secret;  they  would  be  pub- 
lished, commented  on,  decried,  and  the  govern- 
ment-commissioner would  not  pay  the  slightest 
attention  to  them.  He  is  out  after  glory  and 
would  make  a  pedestal  for  himself  of  all  our 
instructions  after  trampling  on  them   noisily. 


48    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

We  can't  change  him  at  this  time  of  day.  I 
have  no  idea  of  the  rules  of  jurisprudence  but  I 
have  some  knowledge  of  the  varying  states  of 
mind  of  officers  of  the  army.  ...  I  close  by 
assuring  you  that  if  we  speak  or  write,  conviction 
is  certain.  .  .  . 

GALLIFET. 

This  historic  letter  proves  a  number  of 
things.  It  proves  in  the  first  place  that  the 
government  of  1899  wanted  to  exert  pressure, 
not  only  on  its  commissioner  in  the  court- 
martial,  which  would  have  been  perfectly 
legitimate,  but  on  the  president  of  the  court 
and  the  judges,  since  M.  de  Gallifet  said  to 
M.  Waldeck-Rousseau,  "Believe  me,  our 
intervention  would  be  harmful  in  the  case  of 
the  government-commissioner,  the  president 
of  the  court-martial  and  the  military  judges.  " 
The  inference  is  that  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau 
had  advised— and  pretty  strongly— inter- 
vention in  the  case  of  the  government- 
commissioner  and  even  of  the  president  and 
the  judges.  That  is  what  the  letter  proves 
first,  and  in  truth  it  did  not  need  to  be  proved. 
What  M.  de  Gallifet  said  of  the  government- 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      49 

commissioner,  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  must 
have  said  with  some  bitterness  of  M.  de 
Gallifet,  "I  can't  change  him  at  this  time 
of  day." 

The  letter  proves  next  that  in  spite  of 
their  divergencies,  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau 
and  M.  de  Gallifet  agree  perfectly  on  one 
point,  that  this  intervention  of  the  govern- 
ment with  those  who  judge  "would  be  very 
useful  in  the  case  of  civil  magistrates." 
Here  there  is  unanimity.  M.  Waldeck- 
Rousseau  is  as  convinced  as  M.  de  Gallifet, 
and  M.  de  Gallifet  is  as  convinced  as  M. 
Waldeck-Rousseau,  that  civil  magistrates 
would  obey. 

And  note  that  it  is  because  M.  Waldeck- 
Rousseau,  a  lawyer,  is  accustomed  to  the 
habits  of  the  civil  bench  that  he  has  been  led 
to  believe  that  military  judges  would  behave 
in  the  same  way  and  that  they  could  be 
handled  in  the  same  fashion.  It  is  because 
M.  de  Gallifet  is  a  soldier,  has  "some  know- 
ledge of  the  varying  states  of  mind  of  officers 
of  the  army,  "  that  he  is  not  at  all  of  the  same 


50    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

opinion  but  believes  that  the  more  you  want 
them  to  obey  the  less  they  will  do  it.  But 
the  opinion  of  one  as  of  the  other  is  that 
the  place  to  look  for  military  obedience  is 
on  the  civil  bench. 

Why  is  this?  Is  it  because  there  is  a  sort 
of  racial  difference  between  army-officers 
and  magistrates?  Not  at  all;  who  would 
maintain  that?  It  is  simply  because  military 
judges  feel  themselves  perfectly  independent 
and  because  civil  magistrates  do  not  feel 
themselves  so.  An  officer  who  is  judge  for 
the  time  in  a  court-martial,  gives  his  opinion 
as  he  forms  it  and  goes  back  next  day  to  his 
rank  almost  as  a  civil  juror  would  do.  I 
say  almost,  because  it  is  true  that  it  is  not 
exactly  the  same  thing.  The  officer  runs 
a  little  more  risk  than  the  juror.  It  may  be 
remembered  later  that  he  was  a  member  of 
a  court-martial  whose  findings  were  not  in 
accord  with  the  desires  of  the  government, 
and  his  advancement  may  suffer  from  the 
fact,  so  that  if  he  were  merely  consulting 
his  own  interest  he  would  do  better  to  find 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      51 

according  to  the  hints  or  the  wishes  of  the 
seat  of  power.  But  after  all  he  is  not,  like 
the  civil  judge,  destined  to  stay  a  magis- 
trate all  his  life  and  to  have  daily  relations 
with  the  government.  His  independence 
is  much  greater.  In  the  last  analysis  it  is 
intermediary  between  that  of  the  civil  magis- 
trate, which  can  be  only  very  feeble,  and  that 
of  the  juror,  which  is  absolute. 

This  is  why  the  pressure  of  government  on 
a  man  who  is  going  to  judge  is  useful  in  the 
case  of  a  civil  magistrate  and  is  harmful  in 
the  case  of  a  military  judge, — as  harmful  in 
the  one  case  as  it  is  useful  in  the  other. 

Note  that  I  am  attacking  a  species,  not 
persons.  The  conduct  of  the  military  judges 
of  Rennes  in  1899  may  be  blamed  and  the 
conduct  of  the  civil  judges  in  1906  may  be 
defended.  It  may  be  said  that  the  military 
judges  of  Rennes  obeyed  their  passions  (obsti- 
nate resolution  not  to  contradict  the  first 
court,  instinct  of  military  solidarity,  etc.) 
and  it  may  be  said  that  the  civil  judges  of 
1906   obeyed — the   government,    no    doubt, 


52    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

but  that  in  obeying  the  government  they 
only  obeyed  a  reason  of  state,  which  is  an 
important  matter.  It  remains  to  be  known 
whether  it  is  not  precisely  a  superior  reason 
of  state  that  there  should  be  a  power  which 
can  oppose  any  particular  reason  of  state  as 
it  appears  to  the  government  at  a  given 
moment.  That  would  need  further  dis- 
cussion. But  I  return;  considering  simply 
the  decision  of  1906  for  itself,  a  decision  very 
evidently  adjusted  to  circumstances,  I  ask 
the  reason  why  it  is,  so  to  speak,  physically 
impossible  for  a  civil  court  of  justice  to  act 
in  this  way.  Because  it  feels  itself  irrespon- 
sible and  wants  to  be  so.  Caught  between 
two  irresponsibilities,  which  is  a  rare  and 
piquant  case,  it  casts  everything  upon  other 
shoulders  than  its  own.  On  the  one  hand, 
it  casts  its  decision  upon  the  law,  which 
moreover  it  invokes:  "I  am  not  the  judge;  it 
is  the  law."  On  the  other  hand,  it  casts  the 
singular  independence  of  the  law  which  it 
permits  itself,  upon  the  government:  "Every- 
one will  understand  that  in  bending  the  law  to 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      53 

put  an  end  to  the  Dreyfus  case,  I  obey  the 
desire  of  the  government.  Carry  your  griev- 
ance to  the  government."  But  what  sort 
of  a  bench  is  that?  It  is  a  very  wise  bench, 
very  prudent,  very  learned,  even  very  honest, 
from  which  every  thought  of  responsibility 
has  vanished  ;  that  is  the  whole  trouble. 

One  of  its  ancestors,  under  the  Restoration, 
said  to  the  government  of  the  time,  "The 
court  gives  decisions,  not  services.  "  Do  you 
see  in  this  magistrate  of  1820  a  survival  of  the 
mentality  that  animated  the  judges  of  1750? 
The  court  gives  decisions,  not  services, — 
what  does  that  mean?  These  words  in  the 
mouth  of  a  magistrate  of  1750,  member  of 
an  order  of  the  state  and  in  no  wise  dependent 
on  the  central  power,  would  be  very  natural 
and  would  only  testify  to  a  high  sense  of 
dignity;  but  pronounced  by  a  judge  of  1820 
they  are  simply  an  anachronism.  The  judge 
of  1820  being  a  functionary,  like  a  prefect, 
has  precisely  nothing  to  render  but  services. 
It  is  praiseworthy  in  him,  nevertheless,  to 
judge  conscientiously,  according  to  the  law, 


54    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

in  all  cases  in  which  the  government  does  not 
intervene.  But  as  soon  as  the  government 
intervenes,  by  the  very  fact  that  he  is  the 
government's  man  he  must  have  no  law 
nor  conscience  but  the  government  itself, — 
otherwise  he  would  be  highly  illogical  and 
even  monstrous.  He  would  be  a  govern- 
ment man  judging  against  his  government, 
in  other  words  the  government  judging 
against  the  government,  and  that  would 
be  simple  anarchy.  In  pronouncing,  for 
the  sake  of  closing  the  Dreyfus  case,  a  de- 
cision without  a  leg  to  stand  upon,  the  Court 
of  Cassation  simply  obeyed  the  desire  not  to 
be  anarchistic. 

These  are  the  consequences,  funny  and  a 
little  sad,  that  result  from  the  fact  of  having 
set  the  judiciary  free  from  all  responsibility. 
The  judiciary  may  enjoy  it,  no  doubt.  No- 
thing is  more  agreeable  than  to  say,  "No  one 
unless  he  is  crazy  can  have  a  grievance 
against  me."  Nevertheless  the  matter  is 
serious.  A  nation  judged  by  men  who  are 
irresponsible,  who  know  and  say  and  prove 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      55 

that  they  are  irresponsible  and  that  the  gov- 
erning power  wishes  them  to  be  irresponsible, 
may  feel  itself  in  danger.  It  may  ask 
itself  if  it  is  not  very  perilous  for  private 
citizens  that,  since  the  bench  is  only  the 
government  sitting  as  judge,  every  dispute 
between  a  citizen  and  the  state  is  necessarily 
decided  against  the  citizen.  It  may  say  to 
itself,  "Would  that  not  be  despotism?" 

It  is  very  probable  that  it  is  despotism. 
It  began  in  France  in  its  simple  form  in 
1789,  but  it  has  since  been  perfected  in 
details.  Nevertheless  there  is  room  for  still 
further  perfection.  That  will  be  the  business 
of  the  socialist  régime. 

Montesquieu  was  appalled  by  this  idea  of 
the  government  as  judge.     He  said  : 

In  despotic  states  the  prince  himself  may  judge 
[and  conversely  every  régime  in  which  the  prince 
himself  is  judge  is  despotic].  He  cannot  do  it  in 
monarchies  ;  the  constitution  would  be  destroyed, 
the  intermediary  powers  would  be  annihilated, 
we  should  see  an  end  of  all  formality  of  judicial 
procedure  [and  the  law  itself,  of  which  formality 
is   but   the  safeguard,   perverted],   fear   would 


56    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

possess  all  minds,  we  should  see  all  faces  pale, 
there  would  be  an  end  of  confidence,  of  honour, 
of  love,  of  security,  of  monarchy.  .  .  The  prince 
is  the  party  who  prosecutes  the  accused  and 
causes  him  to  be  punished  or  absolved;  if  he 
should  sit  himself  as  judge,  he  would  be  both 
judge  and  party. 

Why,  certainly;  in  a  despotism  the  vital 
point  is  that  the  prince,  if  he  have  a  differ- 
ence with  a  private  person,  should  be  at  the 
same  time  party  and  judge.  Without  that 
it  would  be  no  longer  despotism.  That  is 
just  the  stage  at  which  we  have  arrived.  By 
making  the  bench  its  organ,  the  state  has 
despotised  itself  on  that  side  as  far  as  it  can. 

This  situation  was  very  vividly  brought  to 
light  by  M.  Raymond  Poincaré  in  an  eloquent 
preface  which  he  wrote  for  a  book  of  memoirs 
of  an  old  magistrate.  He  begins  by  recalling 
Guizot's  words,  "As  soon  as  politics  pene- 
trates the  precincts  of  the  tribunals,  justice 
has  to  leave."  And  it  is  in  fact  self-evident. 
But  M.  Poincaré  says,  "The  bench  has  never 
been  more  incorruptible  nor  more  conscien- 
tious;   how    does  it    happen    then  that   its 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      57 

impartiality  is  often  open  to  suspicion?" 
He  does  not  lay  it  to  the  growing  malice  of 
men.     He  says  that  it  is  perhaps  because 

justice  and  politics  have  seldom  been  so  exposed 
to  dangerous  contracts  and  sinister  confusions. 
Formerly  [toward  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century]  the  judiciary  composed  a  sort  of  family, 
narrowly  closed,  animated  by  a  spirit  corpor- 
ate, hierarchical,  almost  sacerdotal,  and  isolated 
from  the  world  in  a  tower  of  ivory.  It  had  the 
defects  of  this  state  of  things.  It  was  doctrin- 
aire, formalist,  refractory  to  new  ideas.  But  it 
passed  in  general  for  independent  and  impartial. 
It  also  was  too  often  in  the  hand  of  the  govern- 
ing power.  There  is  somewhere  in  Balzacan 
examining  judge  who  is  the  worthy  precursor  of 
the  magistrates  of  Brieux  and  Arthur  Bernède. 
He  is  called  Camusot.  He  has  a  wife  who 
looks  jealously  after  his  career  and  who,  dream- 
ing of  a  seat  in  the  tribunal  of  the  Seine  for  him, 
murmurs  to  him  tenderly,  "From  that,  my  love, 
to  the  presidency  of  a  chamber  of  the  court  there 
is  no  greater  distance  than  a  service  rendered  in 
some  political  matter."  The  judge  of  those 
days  was  at  least  not  required  to  render  such 
services  to  any  but  the  government.  That  was 
too  much,  but  compared  with  what  goes  on 
to-day,  it  was  almost  nothing.     To-day  the  en- 


58    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

feebled  executive  power  no  longer  dares  make 
an  attempt  on  the  dignity  of  the  bench  except 
when  yielding  to  pressure  from  the  legislative 
power.  But  parliament  is  led  to  consider  that 
justice,  wholesale  and  retail,  is  at  its  disposal, 
and  the  public  itself  ends  by  being  convinced 
that  this  ought  to  be  so. 

How  many  suitors,  fearful  of  losing  their 
case,  have  not  the  candor  [no,  the  intelligence] 
to  address  themselves  to  their  deputy!  And 
how  many  deputies  have  not  ventured  to  make 
application,  insolent  or  discreet,  to  the  judge? 
But  these  personal  meddlings  are  not  so  serious 
as  the  collective  confusion  of  function  which  the 
chambers  think  themselves  authorised  to  make, 
interpellations  on  judicial  questions,  instructions 
shouted  from  the  tribune,  orders  to  the  keeper 
of  the  seals,  commissions  of  inquiry,  and  I 
don't  know  what.  Politics  has  invented  a 
thousand  ways  of  slipping  into  the  hall  of  jus- 
tice, and  a  long  while  ago  justice,  either  se- 
duced or  discouraged,  gave  up  resistance.  Are 
not  the  chambers  the  real  depositaries  of  pub- 
lic power  and  the  sovereign  dispensers  of  ad- 
vancement? A  keeper  of  the  seals  turned  up 
in  1906  who  had  the  bold  caprice  of  bring- 
ing a  little  order  into  this  anarchy,  of  res- 
cuing the  judges  from  the  clutch  of  parliament 
and  of  giving  some  solidity  to  their  personal 
status.     The    order    which    he    countersigned 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      59 

raised  such  tempests  that  he  had  to  reshape  it 
and  soften  it  down.  Since  then  there  has  been 
talk  of  creating  a  supreme  council  of  the  judici- 
ary, analogous  to  those  that  exist  in  various 
ministerial  departments  and  are  charged  with 
the  duty  of  scrutinising  with  perfect  independ- 
ence claims  to  advancement.  And  certainly  it 
would  be  by  no  means  impossible  to  have  in  the 
chancellery  an  organ  comparable  to  the  coun- 
cil-general of  mines  or  of  bridges  and  highways, 
to  the  committee  of  inspectors-general  of  second- 
ary education  or  to  any  other  professional  body 
intended  to  limit  the  arbitrary  choice  of  the 
ministry.  Everything  that  can  be  done  to  sep- 
arate politics  from  justice  and  to  confine  each 
to  its  proper  domain  will  be  a  measure  of  na- 
tional safety.  If  the  judge  does  not  succeed 
in  freeing  himself  from  parliamentary  tutelage 
there  will  soon  be  an  end  of  the  authority  of 
justice.  There  will  be  no  further  need  of  reading 
or  writing  essays  on  the  art  of  administering 
justice;  the  art  of  intrigue  will  answer  every 
purpose. 

Every  word  in  this  strong  and  luminous 
page  is  food  for  thought.  Notice  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  ordinary  and  the 
extraordinary  in  judicial  practice.  The  ordi- 
nary thing  is  the  meddling  of  government  in 


6o    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

cases  to  be  decided.  That  is  what  happens 
every  day.  As  soon  as  government  has  an 
interest  in  a  case,  the  case  belongs  to  it  by 
definition  and  the  bench  recognises  that  it 
belongs  to  the  government,  that  govern- 
ment understands  it  and  ought  to  decide  it. 

To  the  ordinary  belongs  also  the  personal 
interference  of  deputies  in  judicial  matters, 
and  this  is  interesting  because  it  brings  us 
once  more  face  to  face — my  readers  know  how 
often  I  have  examined  this  question — with 
that  institution  which,  though  illegal,  is  none 
the  less  one  of  the  institutions  of  France  :  the 
local  governments.  France  is  much  more  de- 
centralised than  is  generally  believed.  Each 
department  is  administered  by  a  prefect  and 
a  council-general  and  it  is  governed  .  .  . 

By  the  prefect  and  the  council-general. 

Not  at  all,  and  you  answer  like  a  child  in 
a  primary  school.  What  you  are  talking 
about  is  only  the  façade.  Each  department 
is  governed  by  its  Fifteen  Thousand,  that  is, 
by  its  deputies  and  senators  ;  a  little  more  by 
its  deputies  than  by  its   senators,  because 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      61 

the  deputies  upset  ministries  oftener  than  the 
senators  do,  but  still  by  its  deputies  and  its 
senators. 

Before  we  go  further  we  must  make  another 
distinction.  Do  you,  the  department  of 
Saone-et-Marne,  want  to  be  well  governed, 
as  nearly  as  possible?  Elect  no  senators 
nor  deputies  save  of  the  opposition.  Why? 
Because  if  you  only  elect  senators  and 
deputies  of  the  opposition  they  will  have 
no  hold  on  your  prefect,  your  magistrates, 
your  engineers,  your  road-commissioners,  and 
you  will  be  governed  by  the  administration, 
that  is  to  say,  almost  with  regularity,  almost 
with  legality.  But  if  you  elect  government 
senators  and  deputies,  you  will  be  governed 
by  them.  France  is  therefore  divided  some- 
what as  it  was — there  is  at  any  rate  an 
analogy — in  the  times  of  customary  law 
and  written  law.  Just  as  there  were  then 
districts  of  customary  law  and  districts  of 
written  law,  so  now  there  are  districts  of 
state  and  districts  of  parliament.  The  dis- 
tricts   whose    parliamentary  representation 


62    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

belongs  to  the  opposition  are  governed  by  the 
government  through  its  agents,  the  prefects. 
The  districts  whose  parliamentary  represen- 
tation is  governmental  are  governed  by  their 
representatives,  before  whom  the  prefect  is 
nothing  at  all  and  whom  both  the  prefect 
and  the  attorney -general  obey.  The  result  is 
— since  of  all  serious  matters  politics  is  the 
most  grotesque — that  a  prefect  wants  nothing 
so  much  as  to  be  appointed  to  a  department 
belonging  to  the  opposition,  because  there 
he  has  a  free  hand.  And  he  does  not  like  at 
all  to  be  appointed  to  a  governmental  depart- 
ment, where  he  is  a  subordinate.  Another 
result  is  that  the  French  government  governs 
really  only  in  the  departments  where  the 
opposition  has  a  majority  and  which,  because 
they  are  in  opposition,  are  "districts  of  the 
state";  whereas  it  governs  only  in  a  frac- 
tional and  precarious  way  in  the  govern- 
mental departments,  since  they,  being 
governmental  in  sympathy,  are  "districts  of 
parliament." 

But  let  us  consider  only  the  latter  class, 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      63 

which  is  the  more  numerous.  They  have 
a  real  local  government.  Their  senators 
and  deputies  form  a  departmental  commit- 
tee which  the  prefect  must  not  antagonise. 
They  make  the  appointments,  imposing  on 
the  ministry  those  that  depend  on  the 
ministry  and  imposing  on  the  prefects  those 
that  depend  on  the  prefects.  They  remove 
school-teachers  who  are  not  election-agents, 
because  they  have  failed  to  perform  the  sole 
mission  for  which  they  were  appointed, 
and  also  those  that  are  not  sufficiently 
zealous  election-agents,  because  they  lack 
zeal  in  the  discharge  of  the  only  function  de- 
manded of  them.  They  intervene  with 
the  magistrates  in  cases  where  one  of  their 
partisans  might  be  the  losing  party,  for 
that  would  be  a  bad  example  and  would 
compromise  the  republic.  In  a  word,  they 
govern. 

These  local  governments,  very  well  organ- 
ised and  very  strong,  created  for  the  single 
end  of  preventing  government  by  law, 
since  the  law  might  favour  enemies  of  the 


64    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

republic,  make  one  of  the  most  curious  aspects 
of  the  present  régime;  they  impose  them- 
selves on  the  attention  of  the  historian  by 
their  ingenious  mechanism,  and  moreover 
they  are  perhaps  the  essential  institution 
of  the   French  republic. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  how  the  magis- 
tracy finds  in  this  institution  an  excellent 
pretext  for  getting  rid  of  all  responsibility, 
and  moreover  finds  it  pretty  nearly  impos- 
sible to  keep  any.  For  it  is  more  difficult 
to  resist  a  local  government  than  a  central 
one;  the  local  government  holds  you  closer, 
watches  you  more  narrowly,  clutches  you 
tighter.  You  may  refuse  to  the  central 
government  the  acquittal  of  one  of  its 
partisans  found  guilty  of  an  offence  against 
the  game-laws.  When  all  is  said,  that 
would  only  be  a  joke.  But  it  would  be 
disrespectful  and  dangerous  to  refuse  such 
a  thing  to  the  local  government. 

Add  that  if  the  magistrates  disobeyed  the 
local  government  they  would  have  against 
them  both  the  local  and  the  central  gov- 


Leeal  Ideas  and  Customs      65 


-& 


ernments,  since  the  members  of  the  local 
government  would  denounce  them  as  anti-re- 
publican to  the  central  government,  and  since 
the  central  government  depends  on  the 
local  government,  inasmuch  as  the  latter 
is  composed  of  members  of  parliament, 
by  whom  the  central  government  can  so 
easily  be  overturned.  The  chain  is  per- 
fectly welded;  it  is  very  strong. 

In  consequence  the  French  judiciary  obeys 
as  far  as  it  is  able,  or,  if  you  like,  disobeys 
as  little  as  possible,  the  local  government  in 
the  districts  of  parliament,  and  gladly  hands 
over  to  it  the  responsibility  for  its  decisions. 

And  this,  as  we  have  said,  is  the  ordinary, 
the  everyday  procedure.  The  extraordinary, 
which  we  have  seen  and  which  M.  Poincaré 
did  not  fail  to  point  out  also,  consists  of 
those  occasions,  still  pretty  numerous,  on 
which  the  legislative  power  takes  to  itself 
a  judicial  matter  which  in  its  judgment  was 
badly  presented  or  badly  decided.  For  ex- 
ample, the  Rochette  case  in  1910.  Rochette, 
banker  and  promoter,  who  seems  otherwise 


66    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

quite  uninteresting,  had  an  enormous  success 
and  an  immense  popularity.  The  govern- 
ment decided  to  ruin  Rochette,  whether, 
as  is  alleged,  out  of  solicitude  for  small 
savings — which  is  not  impossible,  for  the 
government  may  sometimes  be  solicitous 
for  the  general  interests  of  the  nation,  and 
that  is  altogether  in  the  tradition  of  mon- 
archical and  paternal  government,  and  this 
interest  directed  to  people  not  one  of  whom 
complains  but  who  ought  to  complain  is 
something  both  touching  and  burlesque; — 
or  whether,  not  more  probably  but  as  pro- 
bably, out  of  interest  in  the  bankers  who 
were  its  friends  and  Rochette's  enemies. 
Since  the  government  could  not  act  directly 
through  the  public  prosecutor  because  there 
was  no  complainant,  it  found  a  complainant, 
set  him  up,  invented  him,  and  set  the  judicial 
machine  in  motion.  The  chamber  of  deputies, 
which  did  not  share,  it  appears,  the  solicitude 
of  the  government  for  small  savings,  ordered 
a  parliamentary  inquiry,  that  is  to  say,  mor- 
ally at  any  rate  took  the  matter  into  its  own 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      67 

hands  and  made  itself  judge.  What  does  that 
mean?  It  means  that  the  king  orders  the 
grands  jours.  Under  the  old  régime,  when 
justice  was  impotent  in  a  province,  owing  to 
the  number  of  crimes  and  the  strength  of  the 
criminals,  the  king  used  to  order  the  grands 
jours,  that  is,  he  created  a  high  court  of 
justice  with  full  powers  which  represented 
him,  the  king,  exactly,  and  which  had  the 
right  to  do  all  that  he  could  do  himself. 
In  just  the  same  way  the  chambers — that 
is  to  say,  the  sovereign,  the  prince,  France — 
finding  or  believing  it  found  that  the  bench, 
in  an  affair  in  which  government  took  a 
hand,  was  obedient,  as  always  and  in  accord- 
ance with  its  maxim,  to  the  government; 
finding  moreover  that  the  government  had 
perhaps  hearkened  to  the  voice  of  its  own 
interests  and  not  to  the  voice  of  the  interests 
of  France,  held  its  grands  jours,  and  declared 
that  it,  the  supreme  power,  would  itself 
judge  as  sovereign.  It  substituted  itself 
for  the  government  which  had  substituted 
itself  for  the  bench;  it  cast  its  "act  of  the 


68    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

prince"  on  top  of  the  "act  of  the  prince" 
which  the  government  had  cast  on  the 
judges.  It  dispossessed  the  government 
which  had  dispossessed  the  bench.  It  de- 
clared detestable  the  arbitrary  action  of  the 
government,  and  therefore  replaced  it  by 
one  of  its  own. 

Montesquieu  would  have  turned  white  in  a 
night  before  this  confusion  of  powers,  cor- 
rected by  a  greater  confusion  of  powers; 
before  this  double  confusion  of  powers  ;  before 
a  first  heresy  amended  by  a  more  detestable 
heresy,  and  would  have  said  that  this  was 
despotism  raised  to  the  second  power. 

Nothing  could  be  more  true;  but  what  are 
we  to  do  about  it?  If,  because  the  bench 
no  longer  counts  in  cases  where  politics 
comes  in,  the  government  is  judge  in  politi- 
cal cases,  it  is  logic  that  qua  judge  as  qua 
executive  power  it  should  be  accountable 
to  the  legislative  power.  "I,  the  legislative 
power,  addressing  you,  the  executive  power, 
invade  your  judicial  power;  yes,  but  because 
you   yourself   invaded   the    judicial    power. 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      69 

That  makes  a  double  invasion.  It  may  be 
so,  but  perhaps  one  invasion  corrects  the 
other  and  one  usurpation  sets  right  another 
usurpation." 

In  the  meantime,  it  is  anarchy. 

Oh,  as  far  as  that  goes,  yes.  And  it  fur- 
nishes another  reason  why  the  judiciary  feels 
itself  irresponsible  and  ends  by  smilingly 
resolving  to  be  so.  "There  are  too  many  of 
them,  "  it  says.  "  The  executive  performs  an 
act  of  the  prince  on  me  ;  the  legislative  per- 
forms an  act  of  the  prince  on  the  executive. 
I  depend  on  the  executive,  which  depends  on 
the  legislative.  I  am  accountable  to  the 
government,  which  is  accountable  to  the 
chamber.  In  all  this  only  one  thing  is  clear  ; 
it  is  that  I  count  for  very  little  and  that  I 
have  no  responsibility  at  all.  In  ordinary 
affairs,  barring  interventions  by  the  local 
governments,  which  however  take  place  every 
day,  I  do  what  I  believe  to  be  my  duty  ac- 
cording to  the  law  and  to  my  interpretation 
of  the  law.  Concerning  questions  in  which 
the  government  takes  an  interest,  I  say  to 


70    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

the  government,  'What  are  your  wishes?' 
I  say  to  the  legislature,  'What  are  your 
wishes?'  To  the  two  I  say,  'Are  you  in 
agreement?  your  joint  wishes  shall  be  carried 
out;  you  are  not  in  agreement?  talk  it  over, 
accommodate  yourselves,  and  when  you  are 
agreed  I  will  agree  with  you  both.'  I  have 
nothing  else  either  to  say  or  to  do.  This  is 
the  intention  of  the  real  constitution,  which, 
behind  the  solemn  façade  of  the  official  con- 
stitution, rules  this  land." 

In  other  words,  judicial  power  no  longer 
exists  in  France;  there  is  in  France  no  such 
thing  as  judicial  power.  A  keeper  of  the 
seals,  says  M.  Poincaré,  wanted  to  introduce 
a  little  order  into  this  anarchy,  and  he 
raised  parliamentary  tempests.  I  should 
very  much  like  to  know  who,  in  either 
chamber,  could  have  had  the  fantasy  of 
restraining  the  power  of  the  two  chambers 
by  securing,  even  in  a  small  measure,  the 
autonomy  or  even  the  comparative  inde- 
pendence of  the  judicial  power.  Success 
is  achieved  with  political  as  with  all  other 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      71 

bodies  by  proposing  to  augment,  but  hardly, 
I  suppose,  by  proposing  to  cut  them  down. 
M.  Poincaré  concludes  that  at  this  rate  the 
authority  of  justice  will  soon  be  a  thing  of  the 
past.  I  am  entirely  of  his  opinion,  except 
that  I  don't  see  very  clearly  why  he  uses 
the  future  tense.  And  he  concludes  also 
that  the  art  of  judging  will  be  superseded 
by  the  art  of  intrigue.  It  may  well  be,  but 
what  can  members  naturally  desire  save 
that  everything  in  France  should  be  more 
or  less  perfectly  after  their  image? 

There  is  another  irresponsibility  which 
the  French  bench  has  achieved.  It  has  been 
relieved  of  all  responsibility  for  criminal 
trials;  criminal  trials  are  decided  by  the  jury 
alone.  The  history  of  the  jury  is  extremely 
interesting.  It  goes  back  to  a  sufficiently 
remote  antiquity.  The  heliasts  at  Athens 
were  a  jury. l  It  was  a  case  of  never- mind- 
who  (provided  he   was  a  citizen)  acting   as 

1 1  notice  too  late  that  Montesquieu  thought  of  this. 
Speaking  of  the  English  jury  he  says,  "the  power  of  the 
judge  exercised  by  persons  drawn  from  the  body  of  the 
people,  "  and  he  adds  in  a  note,  "as  at  Athens.  " 


72    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

judge,  because  it  is  amusing  to  judge  and 
because  he  said,  "I  feel  like  judging." 
Moreover  he  received  a  small  fee  for  it. 
The  most  celebrated  decision  of  these  juries 
is  the  condemnation  to  death  of  a  rather 
sarcastic  flâneur  named  Socrates. 

The  jury  never  existed  at  Rome,  for  the 
Roman  never  had  fully  the  democratic 
sense. 

In  England  it  is  very  old.  In  imitation  of 
the  English  the  French  philosophers  of  the 
eighteenth  century  recommended  it  with  all 
their  courage,  even  Montesquieu  himself. 
He  does  not  fail  to  say — note  this  well,  for 
I  shall  speak  of  it  later — that  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  jury  being  attached  neither  to  a  cer- 
tain class  nor  to  a  certain  profession  becomes, 
so  to  speak,  invisible  and  null.  A  man  has 
not  continually  the  judges  before  his  eyes 
and  he  fears  the  magistracy  rather  than  the 
magistrates.  He  adds,  "  It  is  even  necessary 
that  the  judges  be  of  the  condition  of  the 
accused,  or  his  peers,  to  keep  him  from  taking 
it  into  his  head  that  he  has  fallen  into  the 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      73 

hands  of  men  determined  to    use   violence 
with  him.  " 

Voltaire  has  strong  praise  for  the  jury  in 
his  Lettres  sur  V Angleterre;  he  considered  it 
one  of  the  bulwarks  of  liberty,  being  already 
penetrated  by  that  hatred  of  courts  which  he 
retained  all  his  life.  He  is  much  more 
explicit  on  this  point  at  the  very  end  of  his 
life,  in  his  letter  to  M.  Elie  de  Beaumont 
(1771): 

I  prefer,  to  put  it  simply,  the  old  jury-system 
which  has  been  preserved  in  England.  Those 
juries  would  never  have  broken  Calas  on  the 
wheel  nor  decided  under  Riquet  [attorney- 
general  to  the  court  of  Toulouse]  to  treat  his 
worthy  wife  likewise;  they  would  not  have 
broken  Martin,  on  the  most  ridiculous  evidence; 
the  chevalier  de  la  Barre,  aged  nineteen,  and  the 
son  of  president  d'Etallonde,  aged  seventeen, 
would  not  have  been  sentenced  to  have  their 
tongues  torn  out,  their  hands  cut  off  and  their 
bodies  cast  into  the  fire  for  having  failed  to 
make  a  reverence  to  a  procession  of  Capuchins 
and  for  having  sung  a  low  soldiers'  song. 

This  is  all  very  well.  But  when  Voltaire 
was  busy  with  the  Calas  case  and  with  the 


74    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

de  la  Barre  case,  he  made  very  diligent 
research  into  them,  which  is  to  his  honour. 
And  what  did  he  find?  He  found,  concern- 
ing the  de  la  Barre  case,  that 

for  a  whole  year  nobody  in  Abbeville  talked  of 
anything  but  sacrileges.  It  was  said  that  a  new 
sect  was  forming  to  burn  all  the  crucifixes  and  to 
throw  the  wafer  to  the  ground  and  pierce  it  with 
the  sword.  It  was  asserted  that  the  sectaries 
had  shed  much  blood.  There  were  women  who 
believed  they  had  been  witnesses  of  this.  All 
the  calumnious  stories  spread  against  the  Jews 
in  so  many  cities  of  Europe  were  renewed. 
And  you  know  [he  added]  to  what  excess  the 
populace  carries  the  credulity  of  fanaticism, 
always  with  the  encouragement  of  the  monks. 

Concerning  the  Calas  case,  he  learned  what 
he  tells  Damilaville  in  his  letter  of  March 
i,  1765: 

What  was  my  astonishment  when,  having 
written  to  Languedoc  about  this  strange  adven- 
ture, catholics  and  protestants  answered  me 
that  it  was  impossible  to  doubt  the  crime  of 
Calas!  I  was  not  at  all  discouraged.  I  took 
the  liberty  of  writing  to  the  men  who  had 
governed  the  province,  to  the  commandants  of 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      75 

neighbouring  provinces,  to  ministers  of  state; 
all  advised  me  unanimously  not  to  put  a  finger 
into  so  ugly  an  affair.  Everyone  condemned  me  ; 
and  I  persisted.  .  .  . 

In  another  letter  he  says: 

The  fanaticism  of  the  people  succeeded  in 
reaching  the  judges,  prejudiced  though  they 
were  [at  Toulouse].  A  number  were  white  peni- 
tents; they  may  have  deceived  themselves.  .  .  . 

Well,  then!  If  the  people  of  Abbeville 
were  furious  against  La  Barre  and  d'Etal- 
londe,  if  the  people  of  Toulouse  and  Toulou- 
sain, as  well  protestants  as  catholics,  were 
raging  against  Calas;  if  the  fanaticism  of 
the  people  was  such  that  it  could  communi- 
cate itself  to  the  very  judges;  and  since  we 
may  be  sure  that  it  would  have  worked 
more  violently  if  it  had  not  been  communi- 
cated to  the  judges  but  had  remained  in  the 
breasts  of  the  people;  it  is  sufficiently  pro- 
bable that  a  jury  drawn  from  the  people  of 
Abbeville  would  have  convicted  de  la  Barre 
and  d'Etallonde,  and  that  a  jury  drawn 
from   the   people   of   Toulouse   would   have 


76    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

convicted  Calas.  And  it  is  rather  droll  to 
come  and  say  afterward,  "A  jury  would  never 
have  sent  Calas  to  the  wheel,"  the  more 
logical  conclusion  being  that  it  is  precisely 
what  it  would  have  done;  and  to  say,  "A  jury 
would  never  have  burned  de  la  Barre," 
the  more  logical  conclusion  being,  according 
to  appearances,  that  it  would  not  have 
failed  to  do  so. x 

The  truth  is  that  in  attributing  to  the 
jury  a  knowledge  of  criminal  law,  we  have 
removed  the  functions  of  examination,  repres- 

1  As  for  Martin,  in  whose  case  there  was  certainly  a 
judicial  error,  there  is  nothing  to  be  drawn  from  his  history 
either  for  or  against  a  jury.  A  traveller  had  been  mur- 
dered; footprints  which  fitted  Martin's  shoes  led  from  the 
scene  of  the  crime  to  Martin's  house  ;  the  murderer,  seen  by 
somebody,  resembled  Martin  in  dress;  a  witness  of  the 
crime,  confronted  with  Martin,  said,  "I  do  not  recognise 
him,"  and  Martin  cried,  "Thank  God,  here's  one  who  does 
not  recognise  me.  "  In  these  ambiguous  words  the  judge 
saw  an  admission  of  guilt;  he  condemned  Martin;  La 
Tournelle  (chamber  of  Parliament  of  Paris)  confirmed  him. 
Martin  was  broken  on  the  wheel.  The  real  murderer, 
arrested  for  something  else,  declared  himself  the  author 
of  the  crime  attributed  to  Martin.  There  is  nothing  to 
say  about  this  either  way.  Voltaire  is  sure  that  a  jury 
would  not  have  convicted  Martin.  He  doesn't  know 
anything  about  it,  and  neither  do  I. 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      77 

sion  or  acquittal,  from  the  field  of  action  of 
the  passions  of  the  judges  and  confided 
them  to  the  field  of  action  of  the  passions  of 
the  people.  That  both  judges  and  people 
have  passions  is  my  sincere  belief;  but  I  am 
led  to  believe  and  I  venture  to  say  that  in 
the  judges  the  passions  are  weakened  by 
more  education,  by  knowledge  of  the  law 
and  of  jurisprudence,  by  reading  the  philo- 
sophical jurists  and  by  the  habit  of  reason- 
ing. It  seems  to  me  to  follow  that  there  is 
less  of  passion  among  the  judges  and  that 
there  is  nothing  but  passion  among  the 
people. 

I  may  add  that  the  passions  of  the  judges 
are  weakened  by  the  sense  of  responsibility, 
and  that  the  jury  has  no  responsibility. 
Consider  again  that  very  fine  passage  from 
Montesquieu,  "  the  jurisdiction  of  the  jury 
..."  That  is  very  ingenious  and  even  very 
profound.  But  if  the  jury  is  a  magistracy 
invisible  and  null,  the  magistrates  are  no 
longer  feared  and  hated  by  the  rapscallions, 
and   that   is   agreeable   to   the   magistrates. 


78    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

But  there  is  no  one  left  for  rapscallions  to  fear 
and  hate,  and  that  is  dangerous. 

"Yes,"  you  say,  "they  are  not  afraid  of 
the  magistrates  who  are  invisible.  But 
they  are  afraid  of  the  magistracy,  which 
they  don't  see  but  which  they  know 
exists." 

I  am  not  so  sure  of  that.  I  don't  know 
whether  a  magistracy  that  one  may  call 
invisible  and  null  inspires  very  great  terror. 
I  think  it  inspires  the  same  terror  that  chance 
does;  for  chance  is  exactly  what  it  is.  Will 
the  jury  of  the  criminal's  imagination  be  easy 
or  severe?  He  has  no  idea.  The  fact  that 
he  has  no  idea  reassures  you  because  it  ought 
to  frighten  him,  and  it  frightens  me  because 
it  may  give  him  confidence.  The  criminal 
whom  judges  await  acts  with  the  certitude  of 
being  punished  if  he  is  caught;  the  criminal 
whom  a  jury  awaits,  acts  with  the  incertitude 
of  being  convicted  or  acquitted.  This  incer- 
titude is  in  itself,  it  seems  to  me,  rather 
encouraging  than  intimidating.  The  crimi- 
nal who  expects  a  judge  cannot  count  on 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs       79 

his  lawyer,  since  no  lawyer  ever  changed  the 
opinion  of  a  judge;  the  criminal  who  expects 
a  jury  counts  on  his  lawyer,  who  often 
changes  the  frame  of  mind  of  several  jurors. 
When  all  is  said,  only  two  classes  are  grati- 
fied by  the  transfer  of  criminal  trials  from 
judge  to  jury, — the  judges  and  the  criminals; 
the  judges  because  they  are  thus  relieved 
of  a  heavy  responsibility,  the  criminals  be- 
cause to  their  chance  of  not  being  caught 
(about  50  per  cent)  this  adds  the  chance  of 
being  acquitted  by  a  jury  (75  per  cent) .  This 
is  reassuring,  and  to  a  certain  degree  encour- 
aging. Given  that  of  every  hundred  crimes, 
fifty  remain  unknown  ;  that  of  the  remaining 
fifty,  50  per  cent  of  the  authors  are  undis- 
covered; that  of  the  remaining  twenty-five, 
75  per  cent  of  the  authors  are  acquitted;  and 
you  can  calculate,  without  any  exaggeration 
but  the  contrary,  that  a  criminal  when  he 
commits  a  crime  has  94  chances  to  6  against 
being  punished.  This  makes  criminal  indus- 
try much  less  aleatory  than  small  shopkeep- 
ing,  for  50  per  cent  of  the  small  shopkeepers 


8o    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

fail,  while  only  6  per  cent  of  the  industrials 
of  crime  come  to  grief. 

This  is  the  explanation  of  the  continual 
and  rapid  increase  of  criminality.  Some 
have  tried  to  explain  it  by  the  diminution  of 
religious  education,  by  the  influence  of  the 
atheistic  ethics  of  teachers.  All  that  may 
without  doubt  contribute,  and  I  have  small 
doubt  that  it  does  contribute.  But  the 
bottom  of  the  matter  is  the  fact  that  the 
majority  of  trades  offer  many  more  chances 
of  failure  than  that  of  the  murderer,  that 
the  profession  of  murder,  while  not  offering 
(we  must  admit)  absolute  security,  is  at 
least  one  of  the  safest  ;  that  public  office  and 
murder  are  the  only  trades  that  mean  almost 
complete  repose.  This  turns  a  great  number 
of  serious  minds  towards  crime  and  public 
office,  and  away  from  industry. 

Remark  further  that  this  magistracy, 
"invisible  and  null,"  as  Montesquieu  calls 
it,  that  is,  the  jury,  knows  itself  to  be  invisible 
and  null  and  this  adds  to  its  irresponsibility 
the  consciousness  and  the  sense  of  its  irre- 


Leeal  Ideas  and  Customs      81 


'& 


sponsibility.  The  jury  feels  itself  invisible  and 
null  ;  it  is  not  formally  and  by  name  held  up  to 
the  malice  and  the  rage  of  criminals  who  get 
their  punishment,  or  of  their  friends  .  .  . 

("Well,  that  makes  the  jury  more  rigor- 
ous.") 

and  it  is  not  held  up  formally  and  by  name 
to  the  indignation  of  honest  men  who  fail  to 
get  defence  and  protection,  and  that  leaves 
it  free  to  yield  to  its  sentimental  impulses. 
The  jury  is  a  group  of  citizens  invested  for  a 
week  with  the  right  to  judge,  which,  in  the 
first  place,  because  it  has  no  legal  knowledge 
and  no  knowledge  of  criminal  psychology, 
judges  by  hook  and  by  crook,  in  accordance 
with  political  opinion  or  sentiment  or  the 
impression  made  on  it  by  the  public  prose- 
cutor or  the  counsel  for  the  defence;  and 
which,  in  the  second  place,  because  it  is  aware 
that  it  judges  at  random,  tends  to  diminish 
still  further  the  hardly  perceptible  respon- 
sibility which  rests  so  lightly  upon  it,  and 
to  increase  the  almost  complete  irresponsi- 
bility which  it  enjoys. 


82    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

It  has  been  a  very  rare  thing  this  last  ten 
years  for  a  jury  that  has  convicted  to  fail 
to  hand  up  a  recommendation  to  mercy. 
What  does  this  mean?  You  don't  know 
then  what  you  have  done,  and  you  admit 
that  you  don't  know?  You  have  full  powers. 
It  is  to  your  credit  to  acquit  an  undoubted 
criminal,  even  a  criminal  who  has  confessed, 
for  what  we  ask  you  is  not  "  Did  the  accused 
commit  this  act?"  but  "Is  the  accused 
guilty?"  And  you  can  always  say,  without 
any  lack  of  reason,  that  a  man  who  has  killed 
his  father  and  his  mother  is  not  guilty.  So 
you  have  enormous,  plenary  powers.  Well, 
having  plenary  powers,  you  convict  and, 
in  the  same  quarter  of  an  hour,  with  the 
same  hand  you  sign  a  recommendation  to 
mercy.  That  is  where  your  passion  for 
irresponsibility  shines  out  with  dazzling 
clearness.  You  convict  because,  whatever 
repugnance  you  feel  for  conviction,  you  can- 
not, in  conscience  and  without  losing  your 
self-respect,  do  otherwise;  but  you  want  to 
evade    responsibility.     You    want,    when    it 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      83 

comes  to  the  point,  to  make  someone  else 
do  the  convicting,  namely  him  who  refuses 
the  recommendation  to  mercy. 

Here  we  take  in  the  very  act  the  horror 
of  responsibility.  "Before  all,  above  all,  it 
must  not  be  my  fault.  " 

Moreover  we  detect  here  two  things  which, 
when  all  is  said,  come  to  the  same  thing. 
First,  the  taste  of  the  Frenchman  for  washing 
his  hands.  "I've  done  something;  but  I  did 
not  leave  the  spot  without  having  so  acted 
that  what  I  did  there  should  be  null  and 
without  result."  This  amounts  to  saying, 
"I  do  not  meddle;  I  never  want  to  meddle 
and  even  when  the  law  compels  me  to  do  so,  I 
seek  and  I  find  a  means  to  have  not  meddled." 
And  then  we  detect  here  not  less  clearly, 
I  think,  the  taste  that  has  been  character- 
istically French  for  a  century  for  having 
the  government  do  everything. 

Just  as  the  bench,  the  Court  of  Cassation, 
for  instance,  is  enchanted  to  say,  "It  is  the 
act  of  the  prince;  I  was  commanded;  I  did 
not  count  at  all";  so  the  jury  is  enchanted 


84    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

to  be  able  to  say,  "I  do  not  count  at  all; 
I  had  nothing  to  do  with  that  act  of  in- 
dulgence ;  I  had  convicted  ;  I  handed  up  my 
recommendation  to  mercy;  the  government 
exercised  mercy;  it  is  not  my  fault."  Or, 
"I  had  nothing  to  do  with  that  execution;  I 
convicted,  it  is  true,  but  I  recommended  to 
mercy;  the  government  could  have  exercised 
mercy;  it  didn't;  it's  not  my  fault;  I  had 
transferred  my  powers  to  the  government, 
for  in  France  it  is  just  and  it  is  almost  con- 
stitutional for  government  to  do  everything." 
You  see  them  all  eagerly  running  away 
from  responsibility!  By  a  code  relatively 
simple  and  coherent,  we  discharge  the 
magistrates  from  the  responsibility  which  was 
the  result  of  their  being  obliged  to  interpret 
the  law  and  to  judge  a  little  in  equity.  They 
are  happy.  We  discharge  them  from  judging 
the  criminal  by  handing  this  over  to  the 
jury,  a  change  agreeable  to  the  judges  and 
advantageous  to  the  criminal,  so  that  crimi- 
nals and  judges  are  pleased.  But  the  jury 
itself,  though  irresponsible  by  its  invisibility 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      85 

and  nullity,  is  not  at  all  satisfied  with  the 
remainder  of  responsibility  handed  over  to  it, 
and  hands  it  over  to  the  government  in  turn 
by  the  recommendation  to  mercy. 

And  so  we  have  the  spectacle  of  a  fugitive 
responsibility,  not  wanted  anywhere,  chased 
from  this  place,  iîl-received  in  that,  repulsed 
by  these  and  by  those,  odious  to  all  and  find- 
ing rest  at  last  with  the  government,  which, 
be  it  said,  does  not  trouble  itself  in  the  least 
about  it. 

All  this  is  significant  of  the  state  of  mind 
of  the  Frenchman  of  the  nineteenth  and 
twentieth  centuries.  But  this  is  not  all.  To 
the  irresponsibility  of  judges,  to  the  irrespon- 
sibility of  the  jury,  has  been  added,  these 
twenty  years,  the  irresponsibility  of  the 
criminal.  All  the  honest  men  want  to 
avoid  responsibility  for  a  conviction,  but  they 
have  to  know  also  that  the  criminal  was 
not  responsible  for  his  crime.  The  Code 
itself  established  the  principle,  long  before 
(note  that  point)  we  knew  exactly  what 
insanity  is,  that  (1)  he  who  is  to  be  convicted 


86    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

is  the  guilty  person,  and  that  is  the  reason 
why  the  jury  is  asked,  not  "Did  the  accused 
commit  the  act  in  question?"  but,  "Is  the 
accused  guilty?"  and  that  (2)  an  insane  man 
is  not  guilty. 

Now,  we  have  learned  through  study  of 
criminality  on  the  one  hand  and  of  insanity 
on  the  other,  that  the  criminal  is  always 
insane,  that  therefore  the  criminal  is  never 
guilty  and  that  by  strict  logic  the  criminal 
ought  never  to  be  convicted. 

Let  us  analyse  this.  Can  we  say  that 
a  lunatic  is  guilty?  Evidently  not;  that  is  a 
matter  of  common  sense.  The  lunatic  is  a 
sick  person  who  does  not  know  what  he  is 
doing  and  who  cannot  be  blamed  for  his  acts. 
He  must  be  treated,  not  punished.  He  is 
irresponsible. 

Very  good.  But  are  there  not  degrees 
of  insanity?  Yes,  a  man  is  more  or  less 
crazy;  there  are  semi-lunatics  who  are  very 
dangerous,  more  perhaps  than  complete 
ones  because  their  lunacy  is  less  manifest. 
Still,  they  are  only  half  insane. 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      87 

Well,  are  there  not  fourths  and  fifths  of 
lunacy?  Good  heavens,  yes,  certainly,  it  is 
clear  that  there  are  many  degrees.  Then 
there  will  also  be  incomplete  or  limited  re- 
sponsibilities. Doubtless.  Thence  has  arisen 
the  whole  system  of  more  or  less  limited  re- 
sponsibilities. Doctors  have  been  found  who 
calculate  responsibility  by  eighths.  There 
was  one  (it  is  matter  of  history)  who  calcu- 
lated for  a  criminal  a  responsibility  of  45  per 
cent. 

Very  good,  but  what  is  the  mark  of  total 
or  partial  responsibility  in  a  criminal?  If 
you  please,  it  is  his  criminality  itself.  The 
annals  of  justice  are  full  of  verdicts  indicating 
that  this  criterion  is  the  only  one.  A  man 
is  arrested  for  stealing  in  a  large  shop.  He 
is  convicted  and  sent  to  prison.  When  his 
term  expires  he  is  set  free.  He  steals  a 
second  time,  a  third,  a  tenth.  This  time  he 
is  not  again  convicted,  for  if  he  steals  ten 
times  he  is  no  longer  a  thief  but  a  klepto- 
maniac ;  he  is  insane,  he  is  no  longer  guilty. 
Therefore  the  more  you  are  criminal,  the  less 


88    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

you  are  guilty;  a  high  power  of  criminality 
blots  out  culpability  ;  you  are  guilty  only  on 
condition  of  being  very  little  so;  as  you 
advance  in  criminality  your  culpability 
diminishes;  if  you  are  a  very  great  criminal 
you  are  not  culpable  at  all;  and  in  the  last 
analysis  no  one  is  culpable  but  the  very 
honest  man  who  commits  a  fault. 

Note  that  this  is  very  true.  It  is  true  in 
the  order  of  imputability,  as  the  theologians 
say.  Can  you  impute,  that  is,  make  it  a 
reproach  to  a  man,  that  he  has  killed  his 
whole  family  from  grandmother  to  grandson? 
No,  no.  It  is  too  plain  that  he  is  a  brute; 
there  is  absolutely  nothing  to  be  said  to 
him.  Should  one  impute  it  as  a  fault  to  a 
very  honest  man  if  he  commits  a  trivial 
malversation?  Evidently;  this  man  is  highly 
culpable  since  though  he  knew  the  right,  saw 
the  right,  saw  it  all  the  time,  he  did  wrong, 
were  it  but  once.  He  is  culpable  in  the  ex- 
treme. 

This  was  the  quarrel  between  Pascal  and 
the  Jesuits.     The  Jesuits  said  : 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      89 

He  who  takes  no  thought  of  God  nor  of  the  sins 
that  he  commits,  and  has  no  knowledge  of  his 
obligation  to  perform  acts  of  the  love  of  God 
[in  philosophical  language,  no  sense  of  duty] 
or  of  contrition  [remorse],  commits  no  sin  in 
omitting  these  acts.  In  order  that  an  act  be  a 
sin,  the  following  must  take  place  in  the  soul: 
knowledge  of  the  good,  inclination  to  do  it, 
resistance  to  evil  instincts,  etc.,  and  if  these 
things  have  not  taken  place  in  the  soul,  there  is 
no  culpability  ! 

Pascal  replied,  with  a  certain  cleverness, 
I  admit: 

Oh,  reverend  father,  what  good  news  this  is 
for  certain  persons  of  my  acquaintance.  I  must 
bring  them  to  you.  You  have  possibly  never 
seen  anyone  with  fewer  sins,  for  they  never 
think  of  God  at  all;  they  have  never  known 
either  their  infirmity  or  the  physician  who  can 
cure  them.  They  have  never  thought  of  desir- 
ing their  soul's  health,  still  less  of  praying  God 
to  give  it  them;  so  that  they  are  still,  according 
to  you,  in  the  innocence  of  baptism.  They 
have  never  felt  contrition  for  their  sins;  their 
vice  consists  in  a  continual  search  for  every  sort 
of  pleasure,  and  its  course  has  never  been 
interrupted  by  the  slightest  remorse.     All  these 


90    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

excesses  make  me  think  their  destruction  assured  ; 
but  you  teach  me,  father,  that  these  very 
excesses  make  their  salvation  certain.  Bless- 
ings on  you,  father,  for  justifying  men  thus! 
Others  teach  the  cure  of  souls  by  painful  austeri- 
ties; but  you  show  that  those  whom  we  have 
deemed  the  most  desperately  ill  are  really  in 
health.  Oh,  what  a  good  way  to  be  happy  both 
in  this  world  and  in  the  next!  I  have  always 
supposed  that  a  man  was  more  sinful  in  propor- 
tion as  he  thought  less  about  God.  But,  as  I  see 
now,  when  once  he  has  brought  himself  to  think 
no  more  about  God  at  all,  all  things  for  him 
are  henceforth  pure.  No  more  of  these  half- 
sinners  who  have  some  love  of  virtue.  They  will 
all  be  damned,  those  half-sinners;  but  as  for 
the  out-and-out,  hardened,  pure  and  simple, 
complete  and  perfect  sinners,  hell  has  no  hold 
on  them.  They  have  cheated  the  devil  by 
surrendering  to  him. 

There  is  some  truth  in  this.  Nevertheless 
the  Jesuits  are  right.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  imputability,  of  reproach,  in  one 
word  of  culpability  rightly  understood,  that 
man  is  not  culpable  at  all  who  has  no  idea  of 
good;  and  the  man  is  very  culpable  who, 
having  a  clear  idea  of  good,  does  wrong;  and 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      91 

the  half-culpable  or  the  partially  culpable 
range  themselves  between  these  two  extremes. 

Therefore  from  the  point  of  view  of  cul- 
pability, it  is  the  atrocious  criminal  who  is 
innocent,  because  he  is  irresponsible;  and  it 
is  quite  true  that  it  is  by  criminality  itself 
that  irresponsibility  is  recognised  and  by  the 
magnitude  of  the  crime  that  irresponsibility 
is  measured. 

And  the  consequence  is  that  one  is  never 
culpable  if  one  is  criminal,  but  one  is  insane. 

When  the  magistrates  ask  a  doctor,  "Is 
he  insane?"  the  doctor  should  always  reply, 
"Evidently,  since  he  is  criminal."  It  is 
not  always  raving  mania,  but  it  is  always 
stupidity.  A  man  murders  from  jealousy  or 
from  malice  or  for  revenge,  because  he  is  an 
idiot;  he  murders  to  rob,  because  he  is  inept, 
for  there  is  nothing  he  can  gain  so  valuable 
as  what  he  loses;  a  man  steals,  without 
murder,  from  stupidity  again,  so  great  is  the 
fall  for  a  slender  profit;  the  unscrupulous 
business-man  himself  is  only  a  poor  devil  with 
a  very  narrow  mind,  so  stupid  as  to  think 


92    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

that  getting  rich  is  only  a  form  of  profit- 
taking  and  to  perceive  only  when  it  is  too  late 
to  what  degree  it  is  fraud.  Every  culpable 
person  is  a  degenerate;  that  is  the  true 
principle;  the  irreproachable  man  is  only 
an  intelligent  one. 

And  virtue,  where  does  that  begin?  At 
being  not  only  irreproachable,  but  devoted 
to  one's  fellows;  at  not  only  refraining  from 
evil,  for  which  it  suffices  to  be  intelligent, 
but  at  doing  good,  which  intelligence  does 
not  teach. 

So  criminals  are  insane,  delinquents  are 
imbecile  ;  not  one  of  them  has  a  sound  brain  ; 
they  are  all  invalids  and  not  one  of  them  is 
culpable. 

Then  let  us  acquit  them  all  !  No,  condemn 
them  all,  not  as  culpable  but  as  dangerous 
and  as  needing  to  be  intimidated.  It  was 
the  principle  that  was  false,  the  principle 
of  culpability,  a  remnant  of  theological  con- 
fusion. The  true  principle  is  not  to  see 
culpability  anywhere  but  to  see  danger  in 
every  infraction  of  the  law. 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      93 

"But  that  will  come  to  the  same  thing, 
and  there  was  no  need  to  talk  so  much 
in  order  to  leave  things  just  as  they 
were.  " 

Just  so,  but  it  does  not  come  to  the  same 
thing  at  all,  and  here  we  are  at  the  point. 
Of  this  principle  of  culpability,  of  imput- 
ability,  the  judge  or  the  jury,  the  jury  above 
all  since  its  mind  is  less  free,  is  enamoured 
because  the  principle  as  a  practical  guide 
is  false  to  the  last  degree.  "  Is  he  culpable,  " 
cries  the  advocate,  "this  man  the  monstros- 
ity of  whose  crime  of  itself  proves  him  an 
idiot;  this  man  who  from  his  birth,  before 
the  act  which  brings  him  before  you,  has 
committed  nothing  but  extravagances?  No, 
he  is  sick;  let  us  cure  him." 

"It  is  true,"  says  the  jury,  "he  certainly 
is  not  culpable,  therefore  I  acquit  him." 

It  is  the  "  therefore  "  that  is  stupid  ;  exactly 
because  that  man  was  incapable  of  culpa- 
bility, he  ought  to  be  locked  up. 

"Is  he  culpable,  this  man  who  has  been 
imprisoned  three  times  for  theft  and  steals 


94    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

again?  He  is  a  maniac;  do  we  punish 
maniacs?" 

"No,  he  is  not  guilty  because  he  is  so 
so  often,  "  says  the  jury,  and  acquits  him. 

"Is  not  this  other  man  ten  times  culpable,  " 
says  the  public  prosecutor,  "this  man  hither- 
to honest,  healthy-minded  and  even  very 
intelligent,  who  commits  a  knavery,  abusing 
his  honourable  reputation  for  the  facilities 
it  gives  him  to  be  a  rascal?" 

"Yes,  he  is  ten  times  culpable,"  says  the 
jury  to  itself  (and  it  is  true),  "therefore  I 
won't  let  him  off." 

It  is  the  "therefore"  that  is  fallacious. 
Punishment,  or  severe  punishment,  ought  to 
be  reserved  for  the  second  offence. 

Thus  from  this  false  principle — in  the 
practical  field,  in  the  field  of  repression — 
from  culpability  and  imputability  are  de- 
rived collections  of  absurdities  of  judgment; 
at  the  very  least  they  give  rise  to  a  constant 
incertitude  in  the  minds  of  those  who  judge, 
since  they  do  not  know — and  we  cannot 
blame  them — whether  it  is  the  most  culpable 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      95 

that  should  be  punished  least  or  most, 
whether  it  is  the  less  culpable  that  should 
be  punished  less  or  more. 

The  principle  is  false  and  we  need  another. 
We  must  look  at  the  matter  from  the  point 
of  view  of  public  danger  and  intimidation. 

In  regard  to  the  first:  the  issue  is  not  to 
learn  whether  the  man  is  culpable  or  not 
culpable;  we  know  nothing  about  that,  it  is 
a  philosophical  question.  Nor  is  it  to  learn 
whether  he  is  responsible  or  irresponsible; 
we  know  nothing  about  that;  it  is  a  philo- 
sophical question.  The  issue  is  to  learn 
whether  he  is  dangerous  or  not  and  to  what 
degree.  He  is  terribly  so  if  he  is  a  brute 
and  if,  consequently,  he  is  not  culpable. 
Perhaps  he  is  not  culpable,  but  I  will  de- 
prive him  of  the  power  to  injure,  because  he 
is  dangerous.  He  is  dangerous  enough  if  he 
is  half  brute,  half  intelligent;  I  will  deprive 
him  of  the  power  to  injure  by  treating  him, 
educating  him,  trying  to  make  his  intelligent 
part  take  precedence  of  the  other.  He  is 
not  very  dangerous  if  he  is  very  intelligent 


96    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

and  has  done  something  silly;  he  is  more 
culpable  perhaps  than  another,  but  that  is  a 
matter  for  the  philosophers  to  discuss.  I 
punish  him  because  he  needs  a  lesson;  but 
above  all  I  will  place  him  in  the  hands  of 
people  who  will  show  him  how,  precisely  be- 
cause he  was  intelligent,  he  was  absurd. 

In  regard  to  intimidation:  these  persons, 
not  only  those  who  are  brought  before  us  for 
judgment  but  their  congeners,  are  suscept- 
ible of  the  fear  of  blows,  and  the  most  stupid 
among  them  are  susceptible  of  nothing  else. 
Punishment  ought  to  be  a  means  of  depriva- 
tion of  the  power  to  injure  ;  it  ought  above  all 
to  be  a  means  of  intimidation.  The  animals, 
more  responsive  than  man  to  gentle  means, 
are  all  on  the  other  hand  trainable  by  intimi- 
dation. Men  who  approximate  to  animal- 
ity  are  very  sensitive  to  intimidation  and  can 
be  partially  trained  by  it.  It  is  necessary 
that  the  dangerous,  the  noxious,  should  be 
afraid  of  punishment,  that  punishment  should 
not  be  light,  that  there  should  be  no  reason 
for  not  fearing  it,  for  desiring  it,  or  for  taking 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      97 

the  chance  of  it  light-heartedly.  The  corporal 
punishments  used  in  England  are  excellent 
things  because  they  intimidate  both  the 
man  who  has  felt  them  and  who  will  not 
care,  once  out  of  gaol,  to  expose  himself  to 
them  again,  and  the  vicious  who  have  not 
yet  committed  crime  and  are  discouraged 
from  committing  it  by  their  knowledge  of 
the  punishment  they  will  have  to  undergo. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  these  punish- 
ments should  never  prevent  us  from  working 
for  the  education,  the  uplifting,  the  reform- 
ation of  the  culpable.  Every  prison  ought 
to  be  a  hospital,  since  we  are  dealing  with 
the  sick.  Every  prison  ought  to  be  a  school, 
since  the  school  is  a  hospital  for  sick  brains. 
But  it  is  not  necessary  on  that  account  that 
the  prison-hospital-school  should  be  an  agree- 
able place  for  the  criminal,  since  one  of  the 
means  of  uplift  and  reformation  is  exactly 
intimidation. 

As  for  capital  punishment,  this  may  be 
said  against  it  evidently,  that  it  bars  out 
the    intimidation    and    reformation    of   him 


98    The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

who  suffers  it,  and  that  it  has  in  its  favour 
only  the  intimidation  of  those  who  might 
be  inclined  to  put  themselves  in  the  way 
to  suffer  it.  I  apologise  for  writing  on  such 
a  subject  a  word  that  may  cause  a  smile,  but 
the  trouble  with  capital  punishment  is  that 
it  is  incomplete;  from  the  theoretical  point 
of  view  it  is  a  perfect  case  of  incomplete 
punishment;  it  secures  only  one  end  out  of 
three,  it  looks  only  to  general  intimidation. 
I  believe  it  necessary  in  certain  countries  and 
at  certain  times;  in  the  countries  and  at  the 
times  where  and  when  the  absence  of  general 
religious  and  moral  training  creates  a  con- 
siderable social  stratum  composed  entirely 
of  bandits;  in  the  times  and  places  where 
the  gentleness  or  even  the  nullity  of  other 
modes  of  repression  leaves  no  other  means 
of  intimidation  but  this;  in  times  when  a 
recrudescence  of  criminality  renders  neces- 
sary an  aggressive  campaign  of  intimidation. 
For  example,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century  in  France,  for  five  or  six 
years  there  were  no  more  executions.     Crim- 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs      99 

inality  increased  so  appallingly  that  capital 
punishments  were  resumed.  This  return  is 
so  recent  that  statistics  cannot  yet  tell  us 
whether  a  diminution  of  crime  has  coincided 
with  it.  I  am  a  thorough  partisan  of  capital 
punishment  if  it  is  shown  to  be  the  only  way 
to  produce  the  desired  result,  and  completely 
opposed  to  it  as  a  punishment  that  is  intimi- 
dating merely,  if  there  are  others  equally 
intimidating.  I  should  therefore  be  glad  to 
see  a  very  simple  experiment  made.  Let  a 
country  like  England  which  punishes  in  its 
prisons  and  punishes  severely,  where  a 
prison  is  not  simply  a  place  for  social  inter- 
course, suspend  capital  punishment  for  ten 
years.  If  during  these  ten  years  crime  does 
not  increase,  that  will  be  proof  that  the 
prison  with  punishment  and  a  system  of 
intimidation  is  sufficient  ;  and  capital  punish- 
ment ought  to  be  abolished  or  left  suspended. 
If  crime  increases,  that  will  be  proof  that 
capital  punishment  has  a  special  and  specific 
intimidative  value  which  it  would  be  the 
greatest  mistake  to  abandon. 


ioo  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

Penal  theory  ought  not  to  talk  about 
culpability  or  responsibility  or  imputability  ; 
it  should  speak  only  of  greater  or  less  social 
danger.  We  must  return  to  the  real  meaning 
of  words.  What  does  innocent  mean?  It 
means  not  harmful.  That  is  the  social  sense 
of  the  word.  If  by  the  intervention  of  a 
subtle  philosophy  and  by  considerations  of 
responsibility  and  irresponsibility,  innocent 
has  come  to  denote  the  most  harmful  of  men 
— the  more  innocent  the  more  harmful  he  is 
— let  us  leave  all  that  aside  and  defend  our- 
selves only  against  the  nocent  ;  we  will  grant 
him  if  you  like  that  he  is  not  culpable,  but 
we  will  take  vigorous  means  to  prevent  him 
from  being  noxious. 

This  is  the  truth  about  penology.  But  it 
is  easily  seen  how  much  trouble  has  been 
injected  into  the  minds  of  jurors  by  this  in- 
vention of  moral  irresponsibility  confounded 
with  social  irresponsibility.  The  irrespon- 
sibility of  the  criminal  has  augmented  in 
the  breasts  of  jurors  the  passion  for  being 
irresponsible     themselves,     and,     loving    to 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs     101 

acquit  because  of  their  good  hearts  and 
French  kindness,  they  are  delighted  to  have 
a  pretext  for  doing  so.  Every  juryman 
says  to  himself,  "I  don't  understand  much 
about  these  questions  of  psychic  responsi- 
bility; but  what  I  do  gather  about  these 
irresponsible  criminals  is  that  I  am  irrespon- 
sible myself.     And  I'm  very  glad  of  it." 

Irresponsibility  of  the  magistrates  who  can 
discharge  upon  the  law  the  burden  of  deci- 
sion; irresponsibility  of  the  magistrates  who 
can  and  who  think  they  should,  in  the  most 
important  cases,  discharge  upon  the  govern- 
ment the  burden  of  decision;  irresponsibility 
of  the  jury,  who  besides  their  freedom  from 
the  necessity  of  giving  reasons,  can  discharge 
upon  the  government  by  a  recommendation 
to  mercy  the  burden  of  decision  and  espe- 
cially of  rigorous  decision;  irresponsibility 
of  the  criminals,  augmenting  in  the  juror's 
mind  his  terror  of  assuming  the  responsibility 
of  decision;  these  are  the  different  and,  I 
think,  sufficiently  numerous  irresponsibil- 
ities which  enervate  all  justice  in  France  and 


102  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

particularly  repressive  justice,  making  France 
a  country  where  the  most  complete  security, 
though  even  that  is  sadly  incomplete,  is 
that  of  the  criminal. 

Must  we  then  abolish  the  jury  and  return 
to  venal  offices?  We  should  certainly  abolish 
the  jury,  which  has  given  every  proof  of 
incapacity,  so  that  it  is  regarded  by  everyone 
as  a  lottery,  and  so  that  everyone,  counsel 
for  the  defence  as  well  as  the  public  prose- 
cutor, is  in  the  habit  of  saying,  "with  a  jury 
you  never  can  tell.  " 

I  should  be  a  strong  partisan  of  the  re- 
establishment  of  the  venal  office.  However 
monstrous  it  may  appear,  it  still  exists  for 
certain  offices. 

The  offices  of  solicitor  and  notary  are  venal, 
but  this  does  not  excite  public  indignation, 
because  it  exists.  But  would  you  be  badly 
judged  by  notaries  or  solicitors,  if  it  were 
required  in  addition  that  they  should  be  doc- 
tors of  law?  You  would  be  very  well  judged, 
with  very  great  independence  and  a  contempt, 
if  not  complete  at  any  rate  strong  and  general, 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs     103 

of  what  might  compromise  the  judge.  Would 
you  prefer  to  be  judged  by  prefects  and  sub- 
prefects?  No?  Well,  it  is  exactly  by  pre- 
fects and  sub-prefects  that  you  are  judged 
now. 

But,  speaking  seriously,  we  cannot  return 
to  venality  of  office.  Even  though,  as  I  do 
not  hesitate  to  say,  it  would  be  the  best 
course,  we  must  find  another.  I  have 
explained  a  dozen  times  (and  so  I  must  be 
brief  now)  that  it  would  suffice  to  make  of 
the  judiciary  an  independent  order  of  the 
state,  as  it  used  to  be.  This  could  be  done, 
for  example,  in  the  following  way:  let  the 
state  pay  the  magistrates  but  neither  appoint 
them  nor  promote  them;  let  it  have  no  hand 
whatever  in  their  appointment  or  promotion  ; 
then  they  will  be  independent. 

Who  shall  appoint  and  promote  them? 

The  Court  of  Cassation  ;  let  it  make  all  the 
appointments  and  promotions  of  the  whole 
bench  of  France. 

But  if  it  is  the  government  that  appoints 
the  Court  of  Cassation? 


io4  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

It  shall  not  be. 

Who  then? 

The  bench  of  France  by  election,  as  fast 
as  seats  become  vacant. 

In  this  way,  the  supreme  court  appointing 
the  whole  bench  and  the  whole  bench  elect- 
ing the  supreme  court,  the  bench  becomes  a 
closed  body,  autonomous  and  autogenous, 
depending  on  nothing  but  itself  and  proceed- 
ing from  nothing  but  itself,  exactly  like  the 
magistracy  of  the  old  régime,  which  is  just 
what  we  wanted  to  secure. 

Only  since,  differing  thus  far  from  the 
old  régime,  government  pays  the  judiciary 
and  he  who  pays  is  always  a  little  bit  the 
master;  and  since  the  law  constituting  the 
judiciary  along  my  lines  can  be  changed 
by  parliament  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  it 
follows  that  the  law  constituting  the  judi- 
ciary as  an  order  of  the  state  must  be  part 
of  the  constitution,  hedged  about  with  the 
strongest  guarantees  and  incapable  of  being 
changed  by,  for  instance,  a  plebiscite. 

Thus  the  bench  will  be  an  order  of  the 


Legal  Ideas  and  Customs     105 

state,  as  it  must  be    if    we    are    to    have 
justice. 

But  that  is  ultra-aristocratic  ! 

I  am  aware  that  it  is  ultra-aristocratic. 


II 


PROFESSIONS 


The  Frenchman  obeys  just  the  same 
tendencies  in  his  choice  of  a  profession.  His 
passionate  desire,  whether  for  himself  or 
for  his  sons  or  for  his  daughters,  is  a  pro- 
fession of  complete  repose.  And  by  a  pro- 
fession of  complete  repose  he  means  one  that 
involves  no  risk  and  no  responsibility.  The 
Frenchman  desires  with  all  his  strength,  with 
all  his  appetite,  that  his  son  may  be  in  a 
public  office  and  that  his  daughter  may 
marry  a  man  in  a  public  office.  An  official 
is  a  man  whose  first  and  almost  only  duty 
is  to  have  no  will  of  his  own.  "He  united, " 
says  Goncourt  of  somebody,  "the  two  great 
virtues  of  the  functionary,  indolence  and 
exactitude.  "  It  is  well  said.  The  function- 
ary is  a  cog-wheel;  all  that  is  asked  of  him  is 
106 


Professions  107 

to  dovetail  perfectly;  no  one  asks  of  him 
initiative  or  zeal  or  strenuous  labour;  that 
would  throw  everything  out  of  gear,  impede 
the  general  motion,  disturb  the  established 
order.  To  work  infinitely  little,  never  to 
think  for  himself,  but  to  present  himself 
for  adjustment  to  the  machine  at  the  very 
minute  when  the  machine  needs  him — 
that  is  all  that  is  asked  of  him. 

"I  agree  about  exactitude  and  absolute 
passivity,"  someone  will  say,  "but  as  far  as 
work  is  concerned,  that  we  must  have;  since 
there  is  a  certain  amount  of  work  that  must 
positively  be  done.  " 

Not  at  all,  I  should  reply.  Estimating 
eight  hours  a  day  for  the  amount  of  work 
involved  in  a  given  job,  and  $1600  per  annum 
as  the  proper  sum  to  spend  on  it,  the  state, 
knowing  well  the  Frenchman's  mania  and 
that,  however  small  the  pay,  the  job  will  be 
in  demand,  cuts  the  job  in  two  and  gives  it 
to  two  functionaries,  to  whom  it  pays  only 
$800  each  and  from  whom  it  requires  only 
four  hours  of  work.     Then  as  time  goes  on  it 


io8  The  Dread  of  Responsibility- 
subdivides  each  of  these  half-jobs,  and  there 
are  four  functionaries,  each  getting  $400 
and  each  required  to  do  two  hours'  work  a 
day.  Then  it  subdivides  again  and  has 
eight  functionaries,  each  getting  $200  and 
doing  one  hour's  work.  There  it  has  to  stop. 
That  is,  it  has  to  stop  there  as  far  as  the 
salary  is  concerned,  but  not  in  regard  to 
the  amount  of  work  required.  As  appli- 
cations continually  increase  in  number,  it 
subdivides  again  to  create  new  jobs,  and  to 
pay  the  new  functionaries  it  demands  a 
fresh  effort  from  the  taxpayer  and  succeeds 
in  employing  men  who  get  almost  $200  but 
who  do  not  and  cannot  give  more  than  half 
an  hour  of  work. 

And  the  desire  of  the  Frenchman  is  satis- 
fied ;  he  need  not  work,  he  earns  little,  he  has  a 
pension,  he  has  no  will  and  no  responsibility. 
The  calling  of  perfect  rest — he  has  it  in 
every  possible  sense. 

All  this  comes  from  the  two  principal  traits 
of  the  French  bourgeois:  laziness  and  the 
dread  of  risk,  which  are   two   forms  of   the 


Professions  109 

horror  of  responsibility.  The  fear  of  risk 
among  us  is  appalling.  It  is  mathematic- 
ally the  same  thing  to  put  one's  money  into 
an  industrial  enterprise  which  pays  10  per 
cent,  with  two  chances  out  of  three  of  losing 
one's  stake,  and  to  put  it  into  government 
bonds  with  a  return  of  3  per  cent.  Morally 
the  two  are  entirely  different  and  two  chances 
out  of  three  of  losing  everything  terrifies  a 
Frenchman  as  does  the  prospect  of  death; 
it  makes  his  hair  stand  on  end.  But  again 
why?  Because  to  take  a  risk  is  to  assume 
a  terrible  responsibility;  the  Frenchman  feels 
responsible  to  his  children  for  the  fortune 
which  would  be  at  stake;  he  blushes  at  the 
shame  he  would  feel  if  he  had  to  say,  "  I  have 
lost  everything,"  and  he  takes  immense 
satisfaction  in  thinking  that  he  can  say,  "I 
have  increased  your  estate  very  little,  but  I 
have  taken  very  few  chances  with  it."  He 
will  never  have  been  responsible. 

That  becomes  for  a  Frenchman  a  sort  of 
duty.  To  lend  to  the  French  state  seems  to 
him  patriotic;  to  lend  to  industry  seems  to 


no  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

him  to  be  defrauding  the  state,  as  if  the 
greatest  service  he  could  render  the  state 
were  not  to  contribute  to  make  it  an  indus- 
trial, commercial,  rich  nation.  I  know  men 
who  think  it  unpatriotic  to  hold  Russian 
bonds,  as  though  the  way  to  have  allies 
were  not  to  create  financial  ties  between 
peoples,  powerful  in  this  case  but  the  feeble 
too  if  they  have  a  future,  and  ourselves. 
But  there  is  a  risk.  "Reason  tells  us  that 
we  must  work  for  the  uncertain,"  Pascal 
says.  Of  all  French  thinkers,  and  not  only 
from  this  point  of  view,  Pascal  has  had  the 
least  influence  on  the  French  mind. 

Laziness,  that  other  form  of  the  horror  of 
risk,  and  springing  from  the  same  causes  too, 
has  also  a  considerable  influence  in  forming 
the  French  taste  for  having  "a  post."  Our 
bourgeoisie  is  very  curious;  through  heredi- 
tary admiration  mixed  with  envy  for  the  old 
aristocracy  of  the  land,  it  has  adopted  with 
precision  all  its  defects  and  none  of  its  quali- 
ties. All  its  defects  without  missing  one. 
It  despises  the  people  and  you  could  hardly 


Professions  ni 

believe  to  what  a  degree  it  thinks  itself  an- 
other race  than  they,  if  it  is  not  another 
species.  And  since  the  people  work  a  great 
deal,  it  believes  firmly  that  it  is  a  sign  of  high 
rank  to  "live  like  a  lord,"  that  is,  to  do 
nothing.  To  live  like  a  lord  is  absolutely  its 
ideal.  The  employee  who  has  to  be  in  his 
office  from  ten  o'clock  till  noon  and  from  two 
o'clock  till  five,  will  never  be  seen  in  the  street 
before  ten,  because  it  would  look  as  though  he 
rose  with  the  dawn  to  earn  his  bread.  On 
the  other  hand  he  will  walk  with  pride  from 
five  to  seven  in  the  frequented  parts  of  his 
little  town,  to  emphasise  the  fact  that  his 
day's  work 'is  done  three  hours  before  that  of 
the  workingman. 

And  moreover  he  envies  with  all  his  heart 
the  man — not  very  different  however  from 
himself — who  does  nothing  at  all  and  can  be 
seen  idling  from  two  to  five.  This  man  shows 
himself  magnificently  at  all  the  hours  when 
business-men  are  at  their  desks. 

This  bourgeoisie  again  wishes  to  hold 
everything  from  the  state  as  the  old  noblesse 


ii2  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

wished  to  hold  everything  from  the  king,  and 
it  runs  after  a  sinecure  as  the  Lauzuns  used 
to  run  after  pensions,  each  man  for  himself, 
for  his  children,  for  his  sons-in-law  and  his 
nephews;  and  this  is  partly  pride,  partly 
dulness,  partly  laziness. 

The  combination  of  laziness  and  pride  was 
very  clear  to  the  eyes  of  Montesquieu. 

You  see  [says  he]  the  infinite  ills  that  arise 
from  pride  in  certain  nations:  idleness,  poverty, 
abandonment  of  everything,  the  destruction  of 
nations  that  fortune  has  brought  beneath  their 
hands,  and  their  own.  Idleness  is  the  result  of 
pride.  .  .  . 

Idleness  is  above  all  the  result  of  idleness, 
but  it  is  very  true  that  it  is  a  little  the  result 
of  pride:  to  distinguish  oneself  from  the 
workingman  by  the  most  visible  sign — he 
works,  then  we  will  not.  The  citizens  of 
the  ancient  republics,  who  were  aristocrats, 
had  a  profound  contempt  for  the  man  who 
did  anything.  To  Aristotle  himself,  intelli- 
gent as  he  was,  the  workingman  is  a  semi- 
slave. 


Professions  113 

Idleness  is  the  result  of  pride;  work  is  the 
result  of  vanity. 

There  is  some  truth  in  it  ;  still,  since  vanity 
is  only  petty  pride,  or  rather  pride  in  a  petty 
mind,  it  has  more  often  the  same  results  as 
pride  itself.  It  is  through  pride-vanity  that 
the  little  French  bourgeois  does  not  work. 

Work  is  the  result  of  vanity;  the  pride  of  a 
Spaniard  leads  him  not  to  work;  the  vanity  of 
a  Frenchman  teaches  him  how  to  work  better 
than  others.  Every  idle  nation  is  serious,  for 
those  who  do  not  work  regard  themselves  as 
the  lords  of  those  who  do. 

Think  of  the  Spanish  morgue  of  the  French 
bourgeois  ;  he  is  very  serious  ;  he  does  not  care 
to  laugh,  he  does  not  enjoy  wit,  he  likes  to  be 
bored  with  dignity. 

Every  idle  nation  is  serious,  for  those  who  do 
not  work  regard  themselves  as  the  lords  of  those 
who  do.  Examine  all  the  nations  and  you  will 
see  that  in  the  majority  [he  says  the  majority 
because  evidently  he  makes  a  mental  exception 
of  England]  seriousness,  pride  and  idleness  keep 
pace.     The  peoples  of  Achem  are  proud  and 


H4  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

idle;  those  who  have  no  slaves  hire  one,  if  it 
were  only  to  walk  a  hundred  paces  and  fetch 
a  pint  of  rice.  They  would  think  themselves 
dishonoured  if  they  fetched  it  themselves. 

In  every  little  or  middle-sized  town  in 
France,  every  bourgeois  and  his  wife  would 
think  themselves  disgraced  if  they  carried 
in  the  street  a  parcel  as  large  as  your  fist. 

The  women  of  India  think  it  disgraceful  to 
learn  to  read;  that,  they  say,  is  the  business  of 
slaves  who  sing  canticles  in  the  pagodas. 

The  young  girls  of  the  French  bourgeoisie 
despise  those  who  pursue  their  studies 
beyond  the  primary  stage;  girls  who  do  that 
must  want  to  learn  a  trade,  to  become 
teachers,  professors,  to  come  down  in  the 
world.     Have  they  nothing  to  live  on? 

The  bourgeoisie  in  France  resembles  the 
old  noblesse  also  in  having  the  cult  of  ignor- 
ance. It  despises  the  scholar,  the  man  of 
letters,  the  artist — people  with  little  common 
sense,  often  with  eccentric  ideas,  and  in  fact 
ill-balanced;  above  all,  people  who  do  some- 
thing, a   sign  of  inferiority   of  race  and  of 


Professions  115 

mental  inferiority;  moreover  most  of  them 
have  no  government  employment.  For  the 
two  signs  of  social  superiority  are  to  live  like 
a  lord  and  to  have  a  state-office,  things  which 
are  as  often  as  not  confounded. 

The  French  bourgeois  does  not  read.  Our 
publishers  know  it;  if  it  were  not  for  school- 
books  and  the  newspapers  and  stationery 
there  would  be  no  book-shops  in  the  country, 
outside  of  three  or  four  large  towns.  Solici- 
tude for  the  scientific,  literary  and  artistic 
glory  of  France  is  perfectly  unknown  to  the 
French  bourgeois.  To  live  on  the  state  by 
serving  it  nonchalantly  and  to  despise  every- 
thing else — that  is  his  permanent  state  of 
mind. 

He  has  no  idea  how  far  he  is  a  socialist, 
and  how  illogical  he  is  when  he  reproaches 
the  workingman  with  socialism.  Or  rather 
he  has  an  obscure  perception  of  the  thing  :  he 
is  a  socialist  for  himself  but  he  doesn't  want 
the  others  to  be  socialists  for  themselves.  I 
heard  once  a  noble  sentiment  from  a  perfect 
bourgeois,    a    functionary,    a    republican,    a 


1 16  The  Dread  of  Responsibility- 
radical  and  an  anti-clerical.  ''The  socialists! 
Every  man  a  government  official,  that  is 
their  doctrine.  They  all  want  offices  and 
they  want  everybody  to  have  an  office." 
This  is  the  precise  truth,  but  the  tone  in  which 
he  said  it  could  have  been  set  to  music. 
What,  workingmen  in  office?  Peasants  in 
office?  One  doesn't  know  whether  to  laugh 
or  to  cry.  Just  think  what  they  would  look 
like!  Those  creatures  to  hold  office,  just  like 
me!  To  be  paid  by  the  state,  just  like  me! 
Can  you  imagine  such  a  thing? 

I  seemed  to  be  hearing  M.  de  la  Pretin- 
taille  saying,  "All  these  scoundrels  propose 
to  become  noble!" 

The  little  French  bourgeois  also  resembles 
the  old  noblesse,  feature  for  feature,  in  his 
manner  of  bringing  up  his  children.  The 
noble  of  the  old  régime  sought  at  once  for 
his  sons  some  great  lord  who  could  protect 
them  and  advance  them  in  the  world;  the 
bourgeois  of  to-day  seeks  at  once  for  his  sons 
some  high  official  who  can  be  their  protector; 
the   protection-hunt   is   the  whole  care,  and 


Professions  117 

agonising  care,  of  the  bourgeois  father.  For 
his  daughters,  the  old  noble  had  the  convent  ; 
the  poor  bourgeois  has  not  the  convent, 
but,  having  all  the  pride  of  caste  of  the  old 
nobleman,  he  brings  up  his  daughters  exactly 
as  the  noble  brought  up  his.  He  teaches 
them  nothing,  no  trade  either  practical  or 
intellectual.  A  little  bourgeoise  must  not 
become  a  working-girl,  even  of  the  highest 
grade,  a  superintendent  earning  $2000  a  year 
or  a  professor  earning  $1200.  That  would  be 
a  shocking  social  step  downward.  She  must 
not  even,  by  the  sort  of  education  she 
receives,  give  the  impression  that  she  is 
preparing  herself  for  one  of  those  careers. 
That  would  indicate  that  she  needed  it,  that 
she  had  no  dot.  The  dignity  of  the  family 
is  opposed  to  such  a  revelation  or  to  what 
looks  like  such  a  revelation. 

Through  pride  of  caste  the  young  girl 
learns  nothing  and  consequently  places  her- 
self far  above  the  girl  of  the  people,  materi- 
ally and  morally.  Materially:  either  she 
marries  or  she  does  not  ;  if  by  insufficiency  of 


n8  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

dot,  or  through  a  family  reverse  resulting  in 
unexpected  deficiency  of  dot,  she  does  not 
marry,  she  remains  a  poor  old  maid,  exactly 
like  the  daughter  of  the  old  noble  who  was 
sent  to  the  convent,  and  she  is  much  more 
unhappy  than  the  daughter  of  the  people  who 
has  always  her  trade  to  turn  to.  If  she  mar- 
ries she  either  gets  a  good  husband  or  she  gets 
a  bad  one  or  she  becomes  a  widow.  If  she 
gets  a  good  husband,  there  is  nothing  to  be 
said  except  that  she  has  had  luck  in  a  lottery  ; 
if  she  gets  a  bad  husband,  she  is  forced  to 
submit  to  him,  since  she  is  a  creature  incap- 
able of  self-support,  and  she  is  horribly 
unhappy  since  her  lot  leaves  no  room  for  hope 
or  change;  if  she  becomes  a  widow  she  falls 
back  as  a  charge  upon  her  parents  or  upon 
the  state  (for  very  probably  her  husband  was 
a  functionary)  and  she  swells  the  appalling 
herd  of  soliciting  women  who  beat  upon  the 
doors  of  official  ante-chambers. 

Morally:  the  young  girl  of  the  bour- 
geoisie is  far  above  the  daughter  of  the  people 
because  the  daughter  of  the  people  is  free  and 


Professions  119 

the  young  girl  of  the  bourgeoisie  is  a  slave. 
Since  she  cannot  earn  five  cents  a  day  the 
young  girl  of  the  bourgeoisie  has  no  other 
career  than  marriage.  Consequently  she  is 
virtually  forced  to  take  the  husband  pre- 
sented by  her  family,  since  she  is  terrorised 
or  at  least  intimidated  by  the  life  they  would 
lead  her  if  she  refused.  And  just  as  among 
the  old  noblesse,  by  social  usage,  the  young 
girl  was  forced  to  accept  the  husband  pre- 
sented to  her  when  she  was  sixteen  years  old, 
with  the  understanding  that  she  should 
later  enjoy  every  proper  compensation,  so, 
as  the  result  of  economic  necessity,  the 
young  bourgeoise  is  forced  to  submit  to  the 
husband  presented  to  her  when  she  is  twenty- 
five  years  old,  with  the  understanding  that 
she  will  take  later  the  revenge  which  is  her 
due. 

If  she  is  married  to  a  husband  who  turns 
out  to  be  a  good  fellow,  her  lot  is  tolerable, 
although  in  truth  no  lot  is  really  tolerable 
for  a  woman  but  to  marry  a  man  she  loves. 
However  her  lot  is  pretty  nearly  support- 


120  The  Dread  of  Responsibility- 
able.  But  still,  in  relation  to  this  good  hus- 
band, she  feels  that  she  is  absolutely  depend- 
ent on  him,  that  she  cannot  leave  him  if  he 
grows  bad,  that  she  is  materially  bound  to 
him,  and  that  when  he  says,  "I  am  the 
master,  "  she  cannot  without  absurdity  reply, 
''You  are  not."     This  is  slavery. 

If  she  is  married  to  a  bad  husband  she  has 
this  perspective;  in  spite  of  certain  measures 
which  the  state  has  taken  in  her  favour  and 
which  pretend  to  free  her  by  divorce,  she  can 
never  separate  herself  from  her  husband, 
because  he  is  the  earner  and  she  is  incapable 
of  earning;  and  there  is  nothing  on  the 
statute-book  which  weighs  against  that.  It 
is  idle  for  the  law  to  set  a  woman  free  and 
give  her  leave  to  go,  when  the  necessity  of 
eating  obliges  her  to  stay.     This  is  slavery. 

Finally,  as  a  widow,  she  passes  from  the 
status  of  slave  to  that  of  public  mendicant, 
which  is  on  the  whole  a  promotion,  for  it 
means  passing  from  the  status  of  private 
beggar  to  that  of  public  beggar.  But  still 
it  is  very  hard  to  have  to  solicit  the  state 


Professions  121 

or  the  muncipality  for  alms,  to  wipe  off 
affronts,  to  be  told  to  work  and  to  answer, 
"You  know  very  well  that  I  can't  do  any- 
thing; I  am  a  bourgeoise.  "     This  is  slavery. 

Through  pride  of  caste  and  to  the  end 
that  they  may  not  be  as  workingwomen 
nor  seem  to  be  so,  the  bourgeois  gives  his 
daughters  a  status  very  inferior  to  that  of  the 
workingwoman  ;  he  gives  them  the  status  of 
slavery. 

And  he  does  it  obstinately,  touchily, 
proudly.  The  greatest  insult  you  can  offer 
the  French  bourgeois  is  to  say  to  him, 
"You  ought  to  have  your  daughter  learn  a 
trade." 

"A  trade?  dressmaking?  for  what  do  you 
take  me?" 

"A  less  lucrative  trade,  school-teacher, 
professor." 

"A  student?  for  what  do  you  take  me?" 

And  you  are  quarrelling  with  him.  Not 
that  it  has  ever  happened  to  me  ;  I  have  never 
been  so  stupid  as  to  say  that  to  a  bourgeois. 

He    has    perhaps   $7000    to    give    as    his 


122  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

daughter's  dot,  but  his  dignity  will  not 
permit  her  to  raise  herself  intellectually  to 
the  rank  of  workingwoman  or  teacher.  He 
prefers  her  to  be  a  thing,  for  she  is  not 
even  a  servant. 

I  once  wanted  to  find  a  place  for  a  young 
girl  reduced  to  poverty.  A  teacher?  Not  to 
be  thought  of;  she  was  a  little  bourgeoise 
and  I  doubt  whether  she  could  read.  Work- 
ing-girl? What  sort  of  work?  She  did  not 
know  so  much  as  the  alphabet  of  any  trade. 
"A  servant,  then,"  I  said  to  the  lady  with 
whom  I  was  discussing  her.  "Dear  me,  no; 
don't  you  know  that  servants  are  working- 
women,  in  the  kitchen  or  in  the  dressing- 
room?  Your  young  bourgeoise,  having  been 
brought  up  by  the  bourgeoise  her  mother  to 
know  nothing  of  cooking  or  sewing,  cannot 
be  either  a  cook  or  a  lady's  maid.  The 
little  bourgeoise  can  do  nothing  but  speak 
correctly  the  French  of  her  province;  she 
has  no  natural  aptitude  but  for  having 
babies.  And  neither  of  these  functions  is 
remunerative." 


Professions  123 

Contrast  the  case  of  a  young  girl  who 
had  a  very  modest  teaching  appointment 
and  married  a  millionaire.  The  millionaire 
squandered  his  fortune  in  five  years.  She 
stayed  with  him,  became  wretched.  Finally 
he  turned  criminal  ;  she  left  him  and  resumed 
teaching  to  support  herself  and  her  child. 
She  said  to  me:  "I  am  not  altogether  to  be 
pitied.  I  am  like  a  working-girl  whom  a 
man  of  the  world  takes  a  fancy  to,  makes 
his  mistress  and  abandons  when  he  has  had 
enough.  She  always  has  her  trade  to  fall 
back  upon,  and  when  she  is  deserted  she 
returns  tranquilly  to  her  sewing-machine. 
So  with  me.  I  was  heartbroken  by  my 
husband's  follies,  but  I  was  not  panic- 
stricken.  I  had  a  trade,  and  when  I  couldn't 
stand  him  any  longer  I  left  him  without 
despair.  I  was  not  forced  to  descend  to  my 
husband's  moral  level,  for  I  had  kept  my 
sewing-machine  !" 

To  get  his  son  into  a  government  office,  to 
marry  his  daughter  to  a  government  official 
or  to  a  rich  man,  that  is  the  dream  of  the 


124  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

French  bourgeois.  To  make  his  sons  and 
his  daughters  creatures  sufficiently  furnished 
and  armed  to  be  independent,  that  is  what 
he  never  contemplates,  or  contemplates  with 
horror. 

In  regard  to  his  daughters  he  does  not 
perceive,  virtuous  as  he  is  and  esteeming 
highly  as  he  does  feminine  chastity,  that 
he  runs  a  great  risk  of  making  them  courte- 
sans, and  that  this  actually  happens  rather 
often. 

In  two  ways.  Just  like  the  young  noble- 
woman of  the  old  régime,  married  without 
being  consulted,  so  the  young  bourgeoise  of 
our  time,  married  without  her  wish  or 
against  her  wish,  is  very  ready  to  take  a 
lover  later.  Foreigners  are  begged  to  believe, 
in  spite  of  our  novels,  that  this  is  rather  rare 
because  of  the  moderate  sensuality  of  French- 
women, but  still  I  cannot  deny  that  it 
happens. 

But  the  other  way  is  more  frequent.  The 
young  girl  for  whom  no  other  career  than 
marriage  is  open,  who  knows  this  fact  and 


Professions  125 

knows  also  that  this  career  is  highly  specu- 
lative, applies  all  her  powers  to  enter  it. 
She  flirts  implacably;  she  seeks  with  fierce 
determination  and  with  feminine  wiles  to 
get  a  man  on  her  line;  she  plies  the  trade 
of  the  courtesan;  she  is  literally  the  virgin- 
courtesan.  Notice  that  the  young  girl  who 
does  not  flirt  but  whose  mother  flirts  for  her, 
a  frequent  case,  and  who  marries  without 
loving  the  man  who  has  been  crimped  for  her, 
is  a  virgin-courtesan  just  the  same.  That 
is  the  logical  outcome  of  the  ideas,  traditions, 
prejudices  and  manners  of  the  bourgeois. 

This  picture  is  a  little  behind  the  times. 
For  a  generation  or  a  little  more,  the  virgin- 
courtesan  is  appreciably  rarer.  The  young 
bourgeoise  does  not  flirt  any  more;  she  does 
not  even  lend  herself  to  the  vicarious  flirt- 
ing of  her  mother;  she  is  willing  to  remain 
unmarried.  Why?  Incontestably  because  her 
moral  level  has  risen;  because  the  part  of 
virgin-courtesan  is  repugnant  to  her;  and 
because  she  has  the  ideal  of  every  right- 
minded  woman,  to  marry  the  man  she  loves 


126  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

or  not  to  marry  at  all.  Very  good  ;  but  since 
she  is  at  the  same  time  one  of  a  class  who 
must  always  be  slaves  since  they  cannot 
earn  their  own  living,  she  has  the  sentiments 
of  a  free  woman  but  cannot  achieve  the 
destiny  of  a  free  woman.  The  result  is  that 
she  stays  in  her  father's  house  as  long  as  he 
lives  and  after  his  death  becomes  a  very 
wretched  and  sad  little  thing,  a  perpetual 
minor. 

"What  is  a  minor?"  asked  a  child.  "At 
what  age  do  you  stop  being  one?" 

"There  is  no  age  limit,"  his  father  an- 
swered. "When  you  earn  your  own  living 
you  are  no  longer  a  minor  ;  until  you  earn 
your  own  living  you  are  a  minor." 

The  French  bourgeois  dreams  only  of  seeing 
his  son  a  quasi-minor,  that  is,  a  government 
clerk,  and  of  seeing  his  daughters  minors  till 
the  day  of  their  death. 

Have  I  wandered  a  good  way  from  my 
subject?  I  am  right  in  the  middle  of  it.  It 
is  a  little  laziness,  a  lot  of  pride  turned  upside 
down,  and  above  all  a  profound  terror  of 


Professions  127 

responsibility  that  create  all  these  evils.  The 
complete  ideal  of  the  bourgeois  is  not  to  work 
very  much,  but  especially  to  work  only  under 
orders  and  to  practise  no  profession  but 
those  followed  under  orders  and,  man  or 
woman,  to  hold  no  position  of  which  the 
business  is  not  transacted  under  orders. 
The  passion  of  the  French  bourgeois  is  not  to 
enter  personally  into  what  he  is  doing,  to 
obey  someone  who  dictates  to  him  and  who 
is  responsible  for  what  he  does.  "My  work 
does  not  concern  me"  is  the  maxim  he  loves 
to  utter  and  the  thought  he  loves  to  cherish. 
Every  profession  and  every  employment  that 
demands  free  activity  is  unpleasant  to  him 
because  it  requires  him  to  foresee,  to  calcu- 
late, to  combine,  to  determine  the  chances  for 
and  against  and  to  know  just  what  he  risks. 
Now,  to  foresee,  calculate,  combine,  risk,  is 
to  face  a  future  responsibility,  present  already 
in  that  it  is  foreseen.  He  thinks,  "  Some  day 
I  shall  congratulate  myself  on  this,  "  or  "  Some 
day  shall  I  not  reproach  myself  for  this?" 
And    the    responsibility    horrifies    him.     A 


128  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

Frenchman  is  afraid  of  being  responsible  to 
himself.  That  is  why  he  is  devoured  by 
officialdom  and  why  his  daughters  object  so 
much  to  becoming  free  women  and  why, 
above  all,  he  feels  nothing  but  horror  for  their 
becoming  free. 

Note  how  few  free  professions  there  are  in 
France,  and  also  how  the  free  professions 
are  nationalising  themselves  little  by  little, 
transforming  themselves  little  by  little  into 
state-professions.  The  only  free  professions 
are  agriculture,  industry,  the  bar  and  medicine. 
All  the  trades  are  of  course  included  under 
industry.  Now,  in  the  first  place  socialism 
would  like  to  nationalise  all  the  professions 
and  have  every  man  in  the  employ  of  the 
state,  and  that  is  probably  what  we  are 
coming  to,  but  we  won't  discuss  that.  Pend- 
ing its  attainment  in  the  future,  it  is  now  a 
general  tendency.  The  state  wants  to  annex 
the  great  industrial  enterprises  and  it  is  fast 
beginning  to  annex  them,  swearing  that 
they  will  be  better  managed  in  its  hands  than 
in  other  hands.     The  fact  does  not  always 


Professions  129 

furnish  striking  proof  that  it  is  right,  but 
that  is  not  the  present  question.  The  pres- 
ent question  is  whether  the  Frenchman  likes 
this  process  of  transformation.  Yes,  he 
does.  It  is  very  simple.  The  man  who  works 
on  a  railroad  says  to  himself:  "If  the  govern- 
ment ran  the  road,  I  should  work  less,  have 
less  responsibility,  and  get  promoted  by  poli- 
tics. I  should  work  less  because  the  state 
would  have  a  political  interest  in  lending  a 
favourable  ear  to  requests  for  employment, 
would  employ  more  men,  and  according  to  its 
invariable  custom,  from  its  very  logical  point 
of  view,  would  always  have  three  men  where 
it  needed  one.  I  should  work  less.  And  I 
should  have  less  responsibility,  because  the 
state  would  always  have  an  interest  in  not 
discharging  employees  who  are  voters  for  the 
Parliament  on  which  it  depends.  I  should  get 
on  by  politics  for  the  same  reason  that  would 
prevent  my  discharge.  The  employee  who  is 
a  good  voter,  and  who  may  easily  be  a  good 
employee  as  well,  will  of  course  get  on;  but 
much  faster  will  advance  the  good  election- 


i3o  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

agent,  who,  because  he  is  a  good  election- 
agent,  will  be  a  bad  employee.  I  should  get 
on  by  politics." 

The  personal  interest  of  the  man  who  works 
on  a  railroad,  in  direct  opposition  to  the  gen- 
eral interest,  is  on  the  side  of  the  nationalisa- 
tion of  the  railroad  industry. 

The  professions  called  liberal  are  also  be- 
coming nationalised.  A  lot  of  doctors  dream 
of  state  employ  and  are  practically  in  state 
employ.  They  get  positions  as  asylum 
doctors,  hospital  doctors,  doctors  in  state 
schools  and  colleges,  doctors  to  railroads 
(for  several  railroads  now  belong  to  the 
state).  A  remarkable  and  significant  thing 
is  that  they  have  no  interest  in  doing  this, 
unless  they  are  entirely  without  practice, 
and  the  state  does  not  generally  employ  as 
doctor  a  man  who  is  without  practice.  Thus 
the  doctors  who  apply  for  state  jobs  have  no 
interest  in  doing  so,  for  they  are  paid  much 
less  by  the  state  than  they  would  be  paid 
by  private  patients  and  the  time  they  give 
to  the  state  is  practically  time  lost  in  which 


Professions  131 

they  might  be  making  money  elsewhere.  A 
director  of  a  railroad  company  said  to  me: 
11  In  compliance  with  the  law  of  supply  and 
demand  we  are  all  the  time  cutting  down  the 
pay  of  our  doctors;  we  can  always  get  them, 
and  good  ones  too.  We  shall  end  by  paying 
them  only  with  free  transportation  and  we 
shall  still  get  them.  I  don't  understand  it, 
but  so  it  is." 

To  a  doctor  who  asked  me  to  support  his 
application  for  a  post  on  a  railroad  I  said: 
"  Why  do  you  want  it?  It's  a  money  loss. 
In  the  hours  you  will  give  to  the  company 
you  could  earn  five  times  what  it  will  pay 
you,  without  counting  that  during  these  un- 
derpaid hours  you  lose  good  professional 
chances  by  not  being  at  home  when  you  are 
sent  for.  You  are  like  a  small  shopkeeper 
with  a  good  custom  who  shuts  up  his  shop 
six  hours  a  day  and  goes  off  to  work  in  an 
excise  office.  Would  that  be  good  business? 
Why  then  do  you  want  this  job?" 

He  answered,  "There  is  a  title  and  a  sal- 
ary." This  is  a  great  saying.    "A  title  and  a 


132  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

salary,  "  that  is  the  true  motto  of  the  French- 
man. To  have  something  to  put  in  front  of 
his  name  on  his  visiting-card  and  to  get  a 
little  pay  with  great  regularity,  that  is  the 
twofold  vision  of  every  good  bourgeois.  The 
title  is  for  his  vanity;  the  salary  is  for  his 
sense  of  security,  for  the  appeasement  of  his 
terror  of  risk  and  responsibility,  to  quiet, 
partially  at  least,  his  horror  of  adventure. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  the  passion 
of  the  college-professor  for  a  monopoly  of 
education  springs  solely  from  hatred  of 
Christianity  and  horror  of  liberty.  There 
is  a  good  deal  of  these  in  it,  as  I  take  pleasure 
in  acknowledging,  for  the  hatred  of  Chris- 
tianity and  the  horror  of  liberty  are  among 
the  commanding  sentiments  in  France.  But 
there  is  another  element  in  the  energetic 
love  of  monopoly  in  education.  It  is  not  only 
the  desire  to  belong  himself  to  the  state  and 
to  be  sustained  by  it  and  to  teach  nothing 
but  what  it  would  have  him  teach;  but  the 
desire  that  every  professor  should  be  in  this 


Professions  133 

position — that  there  should  be  no  professor 
differently  circumstanced.  Why  is  this? 
Because  the  state-professor,  even  if  he  be 
profoundly  devoted  to  the  state,  has  a  little 
shame  at  being  a  man  in  bonds,  a  man  whose 
thought  is  not  free  save  to  a  limited  extent, 
and  consequently  he  does  not  like  to  have 
any  other  professor  be  or  even  seem  freer  than 
he.  This  is  a  natural  sentiment.  I  shall  be 
told  that  many,  perhaps  the  majority,  do 
not  hold  it.  It  is  true,  but  it  is  because  they 
are  very  intelligent.  They  understand  that 
the  liberty  of  free  workers  is  a  guarantee  of 
the  relative  liberty  of  workers  for  the  state. 
Evidently.  If  there  are  no  workers  but 
those  in  state  employ,  the  state  will  in  the 
first  place  pay  them  what  it  likes,  with  a 
tendency,  to  which  it  will  finally  yield,  to 
come  down  to  a  starvation-wage;  and  in  the 
next  place  it  can  require  all  it  wishes  in 
physical  effort  of  its  manual  workers,  in 
servility  of  its  workers  with  the  mind,  and 
this  is  simply  slavery.  This  is  the  aim  that 
will  be  realised  under  the  socialist  régime. 


134  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

But  if  there  are  both  free  workers  and  workers 
for  the  state,  the  free  workers  will  keep  up 
a  competition  for  liberty.  That  is  to  say, 
the  state- worker,  if  he  is  too  much  hampered, 
can  always  leave  the  service  of  the  state  and 
go  into  free  work.  And  because  he  can  do 
so  he  is  virtually  free,  and  because  the  state 
knows  he  can  do  so,  it  is  forced  to  leave  him  a 
certain  measure  of  liberty,  genuine  liberty, 
and  is  driven  also  to  pay  him  an  honest  wage. 
Thus  the  liberty  of  the  free  worker  ensures 
the  relative  liberty  of  the  worker  in  barracks. 

The  professors,  then,  to  come  back  to  their 
particular  case,  know  well  that  if  they  have  a 
very  acceptable  measure  of  liberty,  this  is 
because  there  is  not  a  monopoly  in  education, 
and  they  say,  "Much  good  it  would  do  us  to 
have  a  monopoly;  we  are  the  class  for  whom 
supremacy  is  death." 

I  entered  the  state  system  of  education 
(knowing  it  well,  since  my  father  was  a 
professor)  without  any  apprehension,  because 
there  was  in  existence  a  free  system,  which 
on  the  one  hand  made  it  possible  for  me  to 


Professions  135 

leave  the  state  system,  and  on  the  other  hand 
made  it  possible  for  me  to  stay  in  it  by  assur- 
ing me  a  tolerable  life,  precisely  because  the 
state  knew  I  could  get  out  if  I  wanted  to.  If 
there  had  not  been  a  free  system  I  should 
not  have  entered  the  system  of  the  state. 

"So  you  would  have  entered  the  free 
system,  if  there  hadn't  been  any?" 

"No,  I  should  not  have  gone  in  for  teach- 
ing at  all;  I  should  have  chosen  some  other 
career." 

"But  what  if  all  the  careers  had  been 
controlled  by  the  state?" 

"That  would  be  socialism.  In  that  case 
I  should  have  lived  in  some  other  country, 
believing  that  a  country  under  the  pure 
socialist  régime  is  uninhabitable." 

Therefore  those  professors  that  reject  a 
state  monopoly  reason  completely  in  their 
own  interests,  outside  of  all  consideration  of 
principles  and  general  ideas.  But  those 
that  desire  the  monopoly  are  men  who  in  the 
first  place,  as  I  have  said,  believe  in  state 
control,  or  men  who  feel  an  invincible  repug- 


136  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

nance  to  Christianity.  In  the  second  place 
they  are  men  who  like  to  have  a  way  of 
thinking  imposed  on  them  because  they 
like  to  have  someone  else  do  their  thinking, 
and  that  is  the  very  bottom  of  the  whole 
matter. 

There  is  no  more  curious  study  than  this 
mentality.     The  thinkers  who  are  partisans 
of    monopoly    are    ultramontane    catholics. 
The  catholic  is  a  man  who  shuns  the  respon- 
sibility of  thought.     So  are  they,  precisely. 
The  responsibility  of  thinking  is  a  very  heavy 
one;  it  has  made  more  than  one  spirit  quail. 
It   takes  much  courage  and  no  modesty  to 
say  to  oneself  at  a  given  moment:  "I  will 
give  no  heed  to  the  thinking  of  my  herd;  I 
will  think  with  my  own  brain,  as  I  digest 
with  my  own  stomach."     That  sounds  very 
simple,  but  it  requires  an  immense  effort.     It 
is  astonishing  how  modest  man  is  by  nature. 
He  delegates  his  thinking  to  others  and  ad- 
mits  he    is  incapable  of  thinking  for   him- 
self.     Catholicism  is  nothing  else  than  that. 
And    protestantism    too,    pretty    nearly. 


Professions  137 

Without  doubt  those  protestants  that  are 
penetrated  by  the  spirit  of  Luther  have 
formulas  of  this  kind:  "Any  religion  that 
a  man  has  not  made  for  himself  is  a  super- 
stition and  not  a  religion";  "Make  yourself 
a  soul  or  you  will  not  have  any";  "He  who 
accepts  from  another  the  soul  he  ought  to 
have,  is  only  a  body.  "  So  that  I  said  once  to 
a  protestant,  "Then  every  protestant  who  is 
not  a  heretic  from  protestantism  is  not  a 
protestant .  "  "  You  are  pleased  to  be  funny ,  '  ' 
he  replied. 

Yes,  the  ultra-liberal  protestants  reason 
thus,  or  they  try  to.  But  the  majority 
are  merely  catholic  latitudinarians.  They 
have  their  dogma  and  claim  that  the  faithful 
must  subscribe  to  it,  and  they  demand  explic- 
itly that  the  faithful  resign  their  function  as 
thinking  beings.  The  only  difference  is 
that  they  are  less  strict.  In  dubiis  libertas. 
There  are  only  a  few  more  dubia  among  pro- 
testants. The  catholic  spirit  dominates  and 
penetrates  all  religions  because  it  is  the 
religious   spirit   itself.     The    religious   spirit 


138  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

consists  in  being  afraid  of  thinking  alone, 
in  thinking  by  herds.     Vœ  soli  putanti. 

It  is  this  religious  spirit,  this  catholic 
spirit,  which  the  monopolists  possess  to 
admiration,  or  rather  by  which  they  are 
possessed.  For  them  as  for  the  catholics 
there  must  be  but  one  faith.  Who  is  to  give 
it?  The  herd  to  each  member.  And  who  is 
to  give  it  to  the  herd?  The  head  of  the 
herd.  They  are  the  faithful  followers  of  the 
state  as  pope.  And  this  anti-clerical  papistry 
is,  like  the  catholic  pope  when  he  has  any 
power,  a  partisan  of  all  measures  of  coercion 
and  will  not  acknowledge  any  priests  of 
thought  but  its  own  priests  of  its  own 
thought.     That  is  quite  simple. 

But  why  do  these  monopolists  show  this 
spirit  very  often  outside  of  all  religious  or 
political  thought?  Partly  through  monism, 
partly  and  chiefly  through  fear  of  intellectual 
responsibility.  Monism,  which  is  a  very 
widespread  taste,  is  the  cult  of  uniformity. 
To  have  all  things  equal  is,  to  some  minds, 
very    beautiful    and    satisfactory    to    their 


Professions  139 

particular  aesthetic,  and  the  best  way  to 
have  all  things  equal  is  to  have  all  things 
the  same  thing.  One  single  thought  through- 
out the  state  levels  and  equalises  all  brains 
admirably  and  prevents  those  differences 
between  superior  and  mediocre  minds  which 
it  is  so  painful  to  see.  One  single  thought 
throughout  the  state  is  order  itself,  since  it  is 
the  contrary  of  irregularity  and  therefore  of 
disorder.  One  single  thought  throughout 
the  state  means  the  end  of  anarchy,  the 
impossibility  of  anarchy.  No  spectacle  could 
be  more  beautiful.  It  is  La  Bauce,  and  La 
Bauce  shows  an  admirable  perspective. 

Is  there  not  almost  physical  pain  in  seeing 
a  Voltaire  and  a  Rousseau  differ  in  opinion 
for  twenty  years,  and,  through  their  dis- 
ciples, for  very  much  longer?  Humanity 
would  have  been  spared  this  melancholy 
spectacle  if  there  had  been  a  unity  of  thought 
imposed  by  a  superior  intellectual  authority 
which  admitted  no  divergences.  This  single 
thought,  a  summary  of  the  thought  of  the 
nation,  would  doubtless  have  suppressed  Vol- 


140  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

taire  as  well  as  Rousseau,  and  Rousseau  as 
well  as  Voltaire,  but  it  would  have  established 
uniformity,  and  there  is  nothing  so  beautiful 
as  uniformity,  that  sign  and  in  fact  that  form 
of  equality.     Ut  sit  œqualitas. 

Have  you  noticed  that  Montesquieu  gives 
us  a  very  plain  choice  between  liberty  and 
equality?  He  says  in  L 'Esprit  des  Lois: 
"I  make  it  felt  that  we  are  free  in  a  political 
society  for  the  reason  that  we  are  not  equal.  " 
And  in  fact  his  whole  book  makes  one  feel 
that,  but  he  says  it  nowhere  so  explicitly  as 
in  this  passage.  We  can  be  free  only  by 
means  of  inequality,  for  the  very  good  reason 
that  equality  suppresses  all  liberty  and  is 
indeed  forced  to  suppress  it  in  self-preser- 
vation, since  all  liberty,  as  soon  as  it  is  used, 
creates  a  superiority  or  an  inferiority  and 
destroys  equality.  Liberty  and  equality 
then  are  antinomies  and  we  must  choose 
between  them.  We,  monists  as  we  are, 
choose  equality  because  it  is  the  best  gener- 
atrix of  uniformity;  we  reject  liberty  as 
generating  irregularity  of    lines    and    con- 


Professions  141 

sequently    ugliness.       Such    is     intellectual 
monism. 

The  monopolists  are  rather  frequently 
monists,  artists  in  love  with  La  Bauce.  They 
are  much  more  often  lovers  of  irresponsi- 
bility, men  who  recoil  before  intellectual 
responsibility.  There  is  nothing  so  cruel  to 
certain  minds  as  to  have  a  thought  of  which 
they  cannot  get  rid  by  reposing  on  someone 
who  has  given  it  to  them  or  who  holds  it  as 
they  do.  They  feel  themselves  alone,  and 
they  feel  about  them  a  great  silence  which 
frightens  them.  Doudan  says  somewhere: 
"When  one  has  advanced  a  little  way  in  a 
study,  the  noise  of  commonplace  is  stilled 
and  one  finds  oneself  in  a  great  silence  which 
is  very  favourable  to  the  labours  of  thought.  " 
Very  good,  but  this  great  silence  is  painful 
to  a  large  number  of  minds.  It  overwhelms 
them,  because  it  signifies  that  they  are  no 
longer  thinking  in  common  with  their  group, 
with  their  party,  with  their  nation,  with 
their  religion.  The  man  who  leaves  his 
religion,   his   fatherland  or  even   his  party, 


142  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

feels  cold.  He  feels  that  he  is  far  from  home, 
an  exile,  an  emigrant.  I  have  known  men 
who,  believing  their  party  to  be  in  the  wrong, 
followed  it  nevertheless,  because  to  leave  it 
would  be  a  sort  of  uprooting.  It  did  not 
seem  to  them  that  man  was  made  to  think 
correctly  in  solitude;  far  rather,  in  the  ex- 
treme case,  to  think  wrongly  and  unjustly 
with  his  herd.  It  was  less  agonising  to  be 
wrenched  away  from  themselves  than  to  be 
wrenched  away  from  their  fellows. 

"But  is  not  that  what  is  called  a  lack  of 
conscientiousness?  " 

I  think  not,  for  it  was  precisely  a  troubled 
and  disturbed  conscience  that  gave  pause  to 
the  men  of  whom  I  speak.  It  is  not  a  lack 
of  conscience,  it  is  rather  having  two.  It  is 
having  a  sort  of  collective  conscience  war- 
ring against  the  individual  conscience.  In  a 
word,  it  is  recoiling  before  a  thought  for 
which  you  are  responsible,  because  you  hold 
it  alone.  The  thought  that  you  hold  with 
others  is  not  heavy  to  carry,  because  so  many 
others  carry  it  with  you.     That  is  intellectual 


Professions  143 

irresponsibility,  and  even  to  some  extent 
moral  irresponsibility.  The  men  who  reject 
academic  freedom  and  who  wish  that  all 
teaching  should  be  in  the  hands  of  the  state 
are  men  who  want  to  think  by  order,  about 
order,  under  orders  and  for  order.  Perhaps 
that  is  the  reason  why  they  are  called  free- 
thinkers. 

They  are  eminently  social,  I  admit;  but, 
to  employ  the  terminology  of  Comte,  they 
belong  to  social  statics,  not  to  social  dynam- 
ics. As  far  as  they  are  concerned  and  if 
they  were  alone,  the  state  would  not  be 
troubled  but  it  would  never  budge  an  inch; 
for — although  this  is  contested  by  certain 
modern  sociologists — it  is  in  my  opinion  the 
inventors  who  create  movement.  "Of  all 
cold  monsters,"  says  Nietzsche,  "the  state 
is  the  coldest,  "  and  I  do  not  flatter  myself 
that  I  have  positive  knowledge  of  what 
he  means.  Perhaps  he  wants  us  to  under- 
stand that  the  state  has  in  itself  no  creative 
warmth  and  must  receive  it  from  individuals 
who  have  it.     It  is  possible. 


144  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

For  the  rest,  be  sure  that  when  the  state 
shall  be  in  charge  of  thinking  for  everybody 
there  will  be  a  very  general  intellectual  cool- 
ing-off.  There  will  be  a  relative  and  pro- 
gressively feebler  conservation  of  the  old 
heat,  but  there  will  no  longer  be  a  hearth. 
I  admit  that  there  will  be  uniformity  and 
that  we  shall  hear  no  longer  the  cacophony 
of  discordant  voices,  which  will  perhaps  be 
a  great  gain. 

However  this  may  be,  the  fear  of  responsibil- 
ity is  the  cause  of  that  passion  for  officialdom 
which  is  at  any  rate  the  most  conspicuous  trait 
of  the  French  character,  and  that  this  passion 
is  at  once  a  sign  and  a  source  of  the  weakening 
of  French  energy. 


Ill 

IN   THE    FAMILY 

That  the  French  family  is  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  things  France  can  offer  for  the 
respect  and  even  the  admiration  of  the  for- 
eigner, and  that  the  foreigner  spontaneously 
admires  and  respects  it  in  many  cases,  and 
in  fact  in  every  case  where  he  does  not  judge 
it  on  the  evidence  of  our  superannuated 
novelists,  I  admit  with  all  my  heart,  and  I 
am  very  happy  to  admit  it.  But  this  book  is 
written  to  criticise,  to  mark  the  weak  points 
of  our  institutions,  political  and  moral,  in  the 
attempt  to  suggest  the  idea  and  the  desire 
of  improvements. 

Now    in    the    family    itself,    the    fear    of 

responsibility  or — and  also — the  false  manner 

of   conceiving   responsibility   are   the   weak 
io  I45 


146  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

points  that  must  be  indicated  with  all  the 
precision  at  my  command. 

The  French  bourgeois  loves  his  children 
with  all  his  heart  and  he  even  loves  them 
too  much,  if  that  is  possible;  well,  he  loves 
them  with  all  his  heart.  This  country  is  per- 
haps the  only  one — or  it  is  where  it  happens 
oftenest — where  man  and  wife  who  do  not 
love  each  other,  end  by  loving  each  other 
in  their  children,  so  that  they  become 
absolutely  devoted  to  each  other.  If  they 
could  observe  themselves  (and  that  must 
happen  sometimes)  they  would  say,  until 
the  first  child  was  born:  "We  do  not  love 
each  other  at  all.  Our  marriage  was  a  mat- 
ter of  arrangement,  as  it  generally  is  in  France, 
not  at  all  of  mutual  knowledge,  as  it  never  is 
in  France  ;  or  else  it  was  a  marriage  of  incli- 
nation, as  it  sometimes  is  in  France  but  still 
not  one  of  knowledge;  and  here  we  are,  with- 
out any  love  at  all." 

And  after  the  birth  of  the  first  child  they 
would  say:  "What  saves  everything  is  the 
child;  she  loves  him   infinitely,   I  love  him 


In  the  Family  147 

much.  She  satisfies  me  in  relation  to  him  ;  we 
don't  quarrel  very  much  since  he  came  ;  I  for- 
give her  everything  for  his  sake." 

And  twenty  years  later  they  would  say: 
"We  have  brought  them  up  with  absolute  de- 
votion, with  infinite  pains  and  unremitting 
solicitude.  She  is  the  best  mother  in  the 
world.  I  tell  her  so  with  emotion  ;  she  tells 
me  tenderly  that  I  am  a  very  good  father  ; 
those  moments  are  very  sweet.  Why,  I  be- 
lieve we  love  each  other!" 

French  married  people  love  each  other 
profoundly  after  the  age  of  love  is  past.  This 
comes  from  the  fact  that  they  love  each 
other  in  the  love  of  the  children.  I  believe 
there  are  countries  where  love  begets  child- 
ren, but  in  France  the  children  beget  love. 
Provided  the  love  is  there,  we  have  the 
essential. 

The  French  then  love  their  children  pro- 
foundly. Only,  for  love  of  the  children 
they  don't  have  them,  and  for  love  of  the 
children  they  don't  bring  them  up. 

For  love  of  the  children  they  don't  have 


148  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

them.  As  Ugolino  devoured  his  children 
that  he  might  preserve  a  father  for  them, 
Frenchmen  abstain  from  having  children 
in  order  to  preserve  for  them  a  rich  father  or 
a  well-to-do  father  and  so  that  they  may 
not  come  to  poverty.  The  nightmare  of  the 
French  paterfamilias  is  having  more  than 
two  children  or  even  more  than  one.  If  he 
has  more  than  two,  he  sees  them  in  the 
future  less  well-off  than  himself  and  in  a 
position  to  reproach  him  with  the  fact. 
From  this  responsibility  he  recoils  with 
terror.  Even  if  he  has  only  two  he  tells 
himself,  with  sound  reason  and  correct 
arithmetic,  that  when  the  children  marry, 
if  both  parents  are  unluckily  still  alive,  the 
property  will  be  divided  into  four  parts,  two 
for  the  parents  and  one  for  each  child;  that 
consequently  each  child  will  have  only  a 
fourth  until  the  death  of  his  parents,  his 
proper  share,  but  a  scanty  portion:  "Oh,  what 
a  wretched  little  establishment  our  daughter 
will  have!  What  a  narrow  entry  into  life 
there  will  be  for  our  son,  who  will  earn  but 


In  the  Family  149 

little  in  his  capacity  of  government  clerk. 
We  ought  to  have  had  only  one  child." 

Thus  he  reasons  through  fear  of  the 
responsibility  he  incurs  by  having  more  than 
two  children,  or  more  than  one.  He  is  some- 
times driven  to  have  two  by  the  desire  for  a 
son,  if  the  first  was  a  daughter.  But  even 
this  does  not  always  screw  his  courage 
to  the  point  of  having  two.  He  always 
wants  one,  because  paternal  love  is  very 
strong  in  him  ;  but  very  rarely  more  than  one. 
He  needs  to  have  a  creature,  issued  from 
himself,  to  love  and  cherish  and  caress  and 
spoil  deliciously  and  by  whom  he  may 
believe  himself  beloved  in  return.  But  one 
is  enough  for  that,  and,  as  soon  as  he  has 
one,  the  paternal  sentiment  is  extinguished 
by  the  paternal  sentiment  itself;  I  mean, 
the  desire  to  have  children  is  extinguished 
by  the  satisfaction  of  having  one  and  by  his 
idea  of  the  enormous  duties  he  owes  to  the 
one  he  has. 

There  is  in  France — let  us  not  deceive 
ourselves    but    come    out    with    it — a    dis- 


150  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

approbation,  a  disesteem,  yes,  a  sort  of  con- 
tempt for  fathers  of  numerous  children. 
They  are  considered  to  be  bad  fathers  since 
they  have  robbed  their  first  child  of  the 
advantage  of  being  the  only  one,  or  their 
first  two  children  of  the  advantage  of  being 
only  two.  They  are  people  who  do  not  love 
their  children;  and  the  elder  children  them- 
selves partake  obscurely  of  this  sentiment. 
And  they  are  also  people  who  lack  the  pre- 
eminent French  virtue,  the  sacred  virtue, 
the  only  virtue  really  esteemed,  economy. 
They  are  prodigals,  spenders,  wasters.  At 
bottom,  in  the  eyes  of  every  French  bourgeois, 
the  father  who  has  six  children  is  a  bohemian 
and  needs  a  lunacy  commission. 

The  result  of  all  this  is,  in  the  first  place, 
that  the  French  family  is  very  united,  very 
concentrated,  very  respectable,  sympathetic 
and  touching;  but,  from  a  certain  point  of 
view,  it  does  not  exist.  The  true  family  is 
numerous,  has  many  children.  In  that 
family  there  is  (a  strange  thing  at  first  sight 
but  explicable  on  reflection)  more  love  on  the 


In  the  Family  151 

part  of  the  children  for  their  father  and 
mother,  perhaps  a  little  jealousy,  as  I  have 
indicated,  on  the  part  of  the  elder  children, 
but  on  the  part  of  the  younger,  who  are  the 
more  numerous,  and,  by  contagion,  on  the 
part  of  all,  much  more  love  and  respect  for 
the  father  and  mother  who  seem  like  patri- 
archs, like  chiefs  of  the  clan  or  the  nation, 
and  who  have  a  sort  of  glory.  You  are  not 
without  acquaintance  with  such  a  family, 
for  they  still  occur;  and  you  have  fully  dis- 
cerned this  sentiment. 

Further,  in  the  family  with  many  children, 
tribal  habits  are  naturally  formed.  In  this 
family  there  are  sound  offspring  and  others 
that  are  less  so.  The  latter  are  put  to  rights 
or  kept  in  place  by  the  others.  The  naughty 
child  has  as  correctors  not  only  his  father 
and  mother  but  the  well-balanced  of  his 
brothers  and  sisters.  The  family  is  a  sort  of 
tribunal  and  jury  where  the  good  are  in 
control  and  try  the  bad.  Even  supposing 
that  the  bad  are  in  the  majority,  two  are 
intimidated  in  wrong-doing  by  a  single  one 


152  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

who  is  on  the  side  of  the  parents  and  upholds 
them  as  they  uphold  him.  In  a  word,  the 
family  is  a  society  in  which  the  bad  elements 
are  more  than  counterbalanced  and  are  re- 
strained by  the  good  elements;  while  in  a 
family  with  an  only  child,  if  he  is  good 
nothing  could  be  better,  but  if  he  is  bad, 
the  parents  have  no  allies  against  him.  The 
numerous  family  has  in  itself  a  very  great 
power  for  good. 

In  the  family  with  an  only  child,  it  happens 
often  that  the  only  child  does  not  live,  and  that 
the  great  effort  of  love  by  which  the  family 
limited  itself  to  one  is  pure  loss.  And  if 
the  only  child  lives,  it  often  happens  that  he 
is  brought  up  with  excessive  feebleness,  that 
he  is  spoiled,  that  he  is  consequently  an 
egoist  and  that  he  does  not  love  his  parents. 
There  are  exceptions  but  they  are  rather  rare. 

That  an  only  child  should  not  love  his 
parents  or  should  love  them  but  little  is  a 
thing  so  natural  as  to  need  no  explanation. 
It  is  by  a  loving  jealousy  that  the  child  learns 
love;  a  loving  jealousy  in  the  main,  tender, 


In  the  Family  153 

sweet  and  very  lovable,  but  still  undoubtedly 
jealousy.  "You  love  my  sister  more  than 
me;"  "You  don't  love  me  as  much  as  my 
brother."  "Yes,  I  do;  I  love  you  both 
alike."  The  jealous  child  is  almost  con- 
vinced; in  the  meantime  the  stirring  of  jeal- 
ousy has  taught  him  love,  and  love  will  never 
leave  his  heart. 

The  only  child,  unique  object  of  worship, 
finds  the  situation  natural,  and  allows  him- 
self to  be  adored  without  reciprocity,  in  the 
absence  of  anything  to  excite  him  to  reci- 
procity or  even  to  give  him  the  idea  of  it. 
The  only  child  is  analogous  to  the  husband 
too  well  loved  by  his  wife,  or  the  wife  too 
well  loved  by  her  husband  ;  he  does  not  love  ; 
that  seems  too  much  his  due  which  is  not 
refused,  is  never  refused  even  by  halves,  even 
a  little,  even  in  appearance;  what  is  squan- 
dered on  you  seems  too  much  your  due. 

There  is  a  very  curious  thing  which  I  have 
observed,  if  I  am  not  mistaken.  The  parents 
of  an  only  child  seem  to  find  it  quite  natural 
not  to  be  loved  at  all.     Perhaps  they  don't 


154  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

notice  it;  I  think  however  that  they  notice 
it  somewhat  and  take  it  as  a  matter  of  course. 
They  seem  to  feel  that  nothing  ought  to 
correspond  to  infinity — "infinity,  nothing," 
as  Pascal  said  in  a  very  different  connec- 
tion; that  to  an  affection  without  limits 
ought  to  correspond,  since  nothing  could 
equal  it,  a  very  languishing  affection,  and 
to  an  affection  of  incredible  activity  an 
affection  altogether  passive. 

It  is  certainly  the  case  that  the  only  child 
is  very  passive  in  affection  and  that  his 
parents  do  not  notice  this  passivity,  or  that 
they  resign  themselves  to  it  or  seem  to  see  it 
with  a  sort  of  pleasure.  Abnormal  situations 
denature  the  feelings.  You  all  know  the 
desperate  love  felt  for  his  wife  by  the  man 
whom  his  wife  does  not  love,  his  desperate 
regret  when  he  loses  her,  the  remark  you 
often  hear  him  make,  "Poor  woman,  she 
never  loved  me;  I  never  knew  how  to  make 
her  love  me."  The  parents  of  an  only  child 
are  only  a  little  bit  like  that,  but  they  are 
somewhat  so,  the  mothers  especially.     "He 


In  the  Family  155 

does  not  love  me;  he  is  so  superior  to  me; 
he  is  adorable  ;  how  could  anyone  help  loving 
that  child?" 

And  in  fact  the  non-affection  of  him  you 
love  strengthens  the  feeling  you  have  of 
the  incommensurability  of  his  perfection 
and  your  unworthiness,  and  confirms  you 
in  your  adoration  of  him. 

Only,  it  is  idiotic.  And  the  road  to  this 
idiocy  is  your  imprudent  prudence  in  having 
only  one  child  instead  of  ten. 

The  ethnic  consequences  are  no  less  grave 
and  no  less  painful  to  consider.  A  non- 
reproductive  people  placed  beside  peoples 
very  prolific  or  only  more  prolific  than  it, 
is  quietly  and  continuously  invaded  by 
them.  France,  between  Germany  and  Italy, 
loses  one  peaceful  battle  a  year  to  Italy  and 
two  to  Germany.  The  children  that  France 
does  not  breed  are  replaced  by  those  that 
Italy  and  Germany  breed  and  send  to  us 
because  there  is  no  room  with  them  and 
plenty  of  it  with  us.  "Rome  has  become  a 
Greek  city,"  said  Juvenal;  with  much  less 


156  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

hyperbole  I  could  say,  urban  France  has 
become  German  and  Italian.  Add  the  cos- 
mopolitan people,  the  Jews,  who,  finding 
themselves  nowhere  better  off  than  in  France 
and  being  very  prolific,  very  largely  people 
our  urban  territory.  It  is  true  and  it  is  an 
essential  part  of  what  I  want  to  say,  that 
the  intellectual  crucible  of  France  is  so  red- 
hot,  so  powerful,  that  out  of  the  sons  of 
Germans,  Italians,  Jews,  it  very  quickly 
makes  Frenchmen  who  have  almost  all  the 
characteristics  of  the  French  race  and  are 
almost  indistinguishable  from  Frenchmen  of 
the  old  stock.  Germans,  Italians  and  above 
all  Jews  are  very  prolific  of  Frenchmen 
who  have  the  French  qualities  and  defects. 
But  this  fact  is  only  half  consoling;  for  if 
these  sons  of  metics  are  very  acceptable 
Frenchmen  from  the  point  of  view  of  intelli- 
gence and  even  of  heart,  it  is  impossible 
that  they  can  be  very  French  from  the  point 
of  view  of  patriotism.  The  thing  happens, 
I  am  told.  I  know  it,  but  I  know  also  that 
it  is  rare.     The  headquarters  of  the  anti- 


In  the  Family  157 

patriots  are  among  the  sons  of  metics,  and 
above  all  it  is  among  the  metics  that  you 
find  the  bulk  of  the  indifference  to  the  idea 
of  "my  country."  So,  as  M.  Edouard 
Petit  says,  in  that  language  which  is  all  his 
own,  it  is  paucinatality  which  contributes 
chiefly  to  the  enfeeblement  of  patriotism. 

It  is  remarkable  in  any  case  that  the  decline 
of  patriotism  among  us  coincides  very  ex- 
actly with  the  diminution  of  the  birth-rate 
among  the  true  French.  One  way  to  batter 
into  ruin  that  patriotism  so  odious  to  some 
is  not  to  have  children.  When  a  teacher 
becomes  a  father  I  wager  that  his  colleagues 
say  to  him:  "You  are  a  begetter  of  children, 
you  are  not  one  of  us."  If  they  don't  say 
this  it  is  because  they  don't  understand 
the   situation. 

I  have  said  that  through  fear  of  responsi- 
bility the  Frenchman  does  not  beget  children 
and  he  brings  up  badly  those  he  does  beget. 
I  pass  to  the  examination  of  this  second 
assertion.  Nothing  frightens  a  Frenchman 
so  much  as  to  bring  up  his  child  himself. 


158  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

When  a  girl  is  in  question  the  French  father 
never  has  anything  to  do  with  it  ;  he  leaves  her 
to  her  mother,  and  that  is  always  a  great  error. 
I  hasten  to  say  that  the  father,  occupied 
outside  by  the  sacred  duty  of  supporting  his 
family,  cannot  devote  a  great  deal  of  time  to 
the  education  of  his  daughters  or  even  of  his 
sons.  Still  he  ought  to  give,  and  with  a  good 
deal  of  authority,  the  general  direction.  I 
should  almost  say  that  the  education  of  the 
girls  especially  concerns  him  until  they  reach 
a  certain  age,  fourteen  years  or  thereabouts. 
The  mother  has  a  number  of  feminine 
qualities  which  she  communicates  insensibly 
to  her  daughter,  and  nothing  could  be  better. 
But  she  has  also  a  number  of  feminine  defects 
which  ought  to  be  counterbalanced  by  a 
masculine  influence,  the  paternal.  These 
defects,  which  the  mother  cannot  combat  in 
the  daughter,  which  she  cannot  even  help 
giving  her,  the  father  must  point  out  to 
the  girl,  always  of  course  declaring  that  her 
mother  is  free  from  them  and  emphasising 
the  mother's  freedom  from  them  as  a  method 


In  the  Family  159 

of  combating  them.     But  anyhow  he  must 
point  them  out  and  condemn  them. 

In  parenthesis,  he  will  correct  them  a  little 
at  one  blow  in  the  mother  too,  by  combating 
them  in  the  daughter  with  an  emphatic 
denial  that  they  exist  in  the  mother.  Lack 
of  system,  nonchalance,  laziness,  eternal 
procrastination  ("we  have  plenty  of  time"), 
inexactness,  loquacity, — I  say  no  more — how 
can  you  ask  that  a  French  mother  cure  her 
daughter  of  all  those  faults?  By  her  exam- 
ple? You  are  joking.  By  words?  More 
possibly;  but  you  know  that  if  one  corrects 
one's  own  faults  but  little,  it  is  because  one 
takes  them  for  qualities  and  congratulates 
oneself  on  them  through  life. 

So,  up  to  a  certain  age  it  is  very  important 
that  the  father  intervene,  very  tactfully  of 
course,  and  with  the  necessary  discretion,  in 
the  education  of  his  daughters.  Royer- 
Collard  had  as  much  authority  at  home  as 
in  political  assemblies,  the  rarest  thing  in 
the  world  in  the  case  of  a  statesman.  He 
was  very  imperious  with  the  Misses  Royer- 


i6o  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

Collard.  He  said  among  other  things,  "You 
are  not  going  to  be  young  ladies;  I  shall 
prevent  it."  I  don't  know  whether  he  did 
prevent  it.  but  I  know  that  he  understood 
the  duty  of  a  father  to  his  daughters. 

The  majority  of  French  fathers,  in  regard 
to  their  daughters,  content  themselves  with 
seeing  them  grow  in  grace,  in  charm,  in 
accomplishments,  and  do  not  bother  them- 
selves about  anything  else.  The  responsi- 
bility of  so  delicate  a  task  as  the  education 
of  their  daughters  would  seem  to  them 
heavy.  They  are  so  many  Chrysales.  Have 
you  noticed  that  Chrysale  did  not  bring  up 
his  daughters  at  all?  Both  of  them  were 
formed  by  their  mother.  Philaminte  had  a 
direct  influence  on  Armande,  who  became 
a  blue-stocking.  She  had  an  influence  of 
counter-effect  on  Henriette,  who,  having 
the  temperament  of  her  father,  reacted 
against  her  mother;  but  her  reaction  went 
a  little  too  far,  was  a  little  too  aggressive, 
too  obstreperous,  so  that  she  is  somewhat 
common  and  talks  like  a  soubrette.     "There 


In  the  Family  161 

is  no  down  on  that  girl,  "  says  Jules  Lemaître. 
Or,  if  you  like,  Philaminte  formed  Armande, 
and  it  was  as  a  reaction  against  Armande 
that  Henriette  passed  over,  very  wittily,  to 
the  trivial.  Poor  Chrysale  did  not  even 
influence  his  sister.  She  sided  with  Phila- 
minte as  with  a  very  distinguished  person 
whom  she  was  proud  and  happy  to  call 
sister-in-law.  But  she,  like  her  brother,  was 
of  the  nearly  plebeian  stratum  of  the  bour- 
geoisie, so  she  became  a  very  vulgar  Phila- 
minte, reading  nothing  but  novels  and 
confining  her  pedantry  to  pride  in  being 
able  to  spell;  a  provincial  blue-stocking.  So 
far  was  her  brother  from  influencing  her  and 
from  being  able  to  say,  "My  poor  good  sister 
at  least  is  left  to  me."  We  have  many 
fathers  who  resemble  him.  Plenty  of  heads 
of  families  in  France  are  Chrysales. 

There  is  an  extremely  serious  point  in  the 
education  of  girls  in  regard  to  which  this 
fear  of  responsibility  is  pushed  to  the  most 
ridiculous  degree  and  also  constitutes  a  very 
grave  danger.     To  tell  the  truth  it  is  the 


i62  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

mothers  who  are  concerned  here  and  the 
fathers  have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  I  am 
speaking  of  the  revelation  to  be  made  to  the 
young  of  the  relations  between  men  and 
women.  It  is  understood  in  most  French 
families  that  this  revelation  is  never  to  be 
made,  or  is  to  be  made  only  two  or  three  hours 
before  the  wedding.  Nothing  could  be  more 
dangerous.  Either  the  girl  remains  ignorant, 
which  happens  oftener  than  one  thinks,  or  she 
gets  her  information  from  young  friends. 
In  the  first  case,  she  is  exposed  to  grave 
perils;  in  the  second,  her  information  is 
confused,  disquieting  and  indecent.  The 
mysteries  of  life  ought  to  be  taught  clearly, 
chastely,  seriously,  gravely,  since  they  are 
in  fact  the  most  serious,  grave  and  chaste  of 
things.  But  the  mothers  recoil  before  the 
responsibility  which  they  think  they  incur 
in  teaching  these  mysteries.  To  rub  the 
down  from  a  daughter's  soul  seems  to  them 
a  bad  action.  Do  they  prefer  to  have  some- 
body else  do  it?  No,  not  exactly;  but  they 
postpone  doing  it  indefinitely,  until  the  time 


In  the  Family  163 

comes  when  they  tell  themselves  vaguely,  not 
wanting  to  be  sure  about  it,  that  it  has  been 
done.  There  is  here  a  very  characteristic 
lack  of  courage,  which  is  at  the  same  time 
a  great  imprudence.  The  girl  ought  to  be 
instructed  briefly  and  clearly  in  the  physical 
facts  of  love  as  soon  as  she  is  a  girl.  The 
only  way  to  make  dangers  avoidable  is  not 
to  leave  them  unknown  ;  and  the  only  way  to 
keep  curiosity  from  growing  unhealthy  is  to 
satisfy  it  wholesomely. 

We  see  how  numerous  and  how  diverse  are 
the  phobias  in  regard  to  responsibility  that 
exist  in  the  French  family.  This  people,  so 
courageous,  lacks  civic  courage  and  also 
family  courage.  Family  courage  is  the  first 
chronologically  of  all  the  courages.  All  the 
others  rest  upon  it,  or  rather  it  is  the  atmo- 
sphere in  which  all  the  others  must,  if  not 
exactly  come  to  life,  at  any  rate  develop, 
find  nourishment,  maintain  and  renew 
themselves. 


IV 

IN    POLITICAL    CUSTOMS 

There  are  two  things  in  politics,  the 
political  constitution  and  political  customs. 
The  political  constitution  of  the  French,  to 
begin  with  that,  is  founded  on  universal 
irresponsibility.  Under  the  old  régime  there 
was  a  very  real  responsibility,  that  of  the 
king.  We  are  too  apt  to  forget  it,  but  if  the 
king  was  absolute  (which  however  is  absurd) 
he  was  eternally  and  absolutely  responsible 
and  was  made  to  feel  so.  Note  that  after 
the  end  of  the  civil  wars  of  the  sixteenth 
century  the  French  crown  governed  de- 
spotically, but  was  continually  checked  by 
revolts.  The  reign  of  Louis  XIII  was  a  con- 
stant struggle  of  the  crown  against  the 
nobility  in  insurrection;  so  was  the  minority 
of  Louis  XIV,  with  the  magistrates  and  the 
164 


In  Political  Customs  165 

people  added  to  the  nobility;  Louis  XIV, 
when  he  reigned  himself,  had  to  struggle 
with  the  protestants  whom  he  had  impru- 
dently provoked,  and  he  was  always  uneasy 
about  the  parliaments  and  lived  always  as 
though  on  the  eve  of  a  Fronde.  We  must 
understand  that  the  monarchy,  called  ab- 
solute, felt  itself  continually  menaced  and 
consequently  felt  itself  very  responsible.  It 
had  moments  of  the  intoxication  of  absolute 
power,  but  was  always  haunted  by  the  con- 
fused feeling — sometimes  a  very  definite 
feeling — that  someone  existed  close  at  hand 
who  demanded  an  account  or  would  some 
day  demand  one.  Its  intermittent  wisdom 
held  fast  to  that  idea;  its  folly  lay  in  not 
understanding  that  it  was  bound  to  organise 
that  confused  and  indeterminate  respon- 
sibility, that  a  despotism  tempered  by  insur- 
rection or  by  the  fear  of  insurrection  is  a 
despotism  menaced,  a  despotism  intimidated, 
but  not  a  tempered  monarchy;  that  the 
responsibility  must  be  determined  in  order 
to    become   normal   and   fecund    of   happy 


i66  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

results;  that  insurrection  must  be  disarmed 
beforehand  by  giving  freedom  of  speech  to 
the  opposition,  and  that  one  does  not  find 
the  people  against  one  if  they  have  permission 
to  speak  and  their  words  are  heeded.  But 
still  responsibility  existed  and  was  very  dis- 
tinctly felt. 

So  much  the  more  in  that  the  crown  felt 
itself,  though  rather  vaguely,  I  admit,  a 
usurper.  It  knew  that  a  constitution  had 
existed,  that  the  kingdom  had  had  "funda- 
mental laws,"  binding  the  king,  inviolable  by 
the  king,  which  the  king  had  allowed  to  fall 
by  degrees  into  desuetude,  particularly  in  the 
interests  of  civil  troubles  which  are  always 
useful  to  the  conqueror,  but  fundamental 
laws  which  had  existed  and  which  still 
virtually  existed.  I  do  not  know  a  single 
political  writer  of  the  old  régime  who  main- 
tained that  the  monarchy  of  France  was  a 
despotic  monarchy.  They  all  said  that 
there  were  laws  above  the  king  and  that  the 
king  could  not  do  anything  he  liked.  When 
the  crown  said — and  it  said  it  a  hundred 


In  Political  Customs  167 

times,  addressing  the  parliaments — that  the 
legislative  power  was  the  king,  it  knew  that 
it  was  not  speaking  the  truth  and  it  was 
perfectly  conscious  of  itself  as  a  usurper. 

The  clergy  only  told  the  crown  pretty 
constantly  that  it  was  sovereign,  holding  its 
power  from  God  alone;  but  in  the  same 
breath  they  fastened  upon  it  a  very  formid- 
able responsibility;  they  cried  that  it  was 
responsible  before  God  and  that  it  owed 
an  account  to  God  for  what  it  did  against 
the  people  or  without  troubling  about  the 
people. 

I  shall  be  told  that  this  responsibility 
may  appear  slight,  indefinite,  because  it  is 
infinite,  and  that  the  crown  might  say  like 
Tartuffe,  "if  heaven  is  all  .  .  ."  We  must 
not  take  the  matter  quite  like  that  ;  we  must 
not  take  it  as  though  the  clergy  had  whis- 
pered that  to  the  crown  in  privacy.  They  said 
it  aloud,  and  here  is  where  temporal  responsi- 
bility begins.  They  said  it  aloud  and  the 
people  heard  it  as  plainly  as  the  king  and 
seized  in  it  the  idea  of  royal  responsibility. 


i68  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

To  govern  justly  was  a  duty  to  God.  True, 
but  it  was  a  duty  to  the  people  to  govern 
them  as  God  wished  them  to  be  governed. 
Here  was  displayed  again,  though  enfeebled, 
the  old  intervention  of  the  spiritual  power 
in  matters  temporal  in  the  name  of  a  sover- 
eign God,  an  intervention  which  had  often 
been  so  effective  and  so  salutary  in  the  case 
of  barbarous  princes.  Notice  that  a  sover- 
eign who  fears  God  feels  a  heavier  respon- 
sibility, though  he  be  an  absolute  prince, 
than  a  sovereign  chosen  by  the  people  and 
holding  nominally  from  the  people.  When 
the  church  said,  "All  human  power  comes 
from  God,"  it  is  generally  believed  that  it 
crushed  the  people  beneath  the  sovereign. 
Take  care!  In  saying  to  the  king  that  his 
power  came  from  God  it  made  him  at  one 
blow  responsible  before  God  to  a  terrible 
degree.  On  the  other  hand  the  sovereign 
who  says  to  himself  that  he  holds  from  the 
people  alone,  feels  that  he  really  holds  from 
no  one,  that  his  claim  rests  on  nothing  but 
success,  that  he  will  be  popular  as  long  as  he 


In  Political  Customs         169 

is  fortunate  and  that  he  will  be  detested, 
abandoned,  overthrown,  when  fortune  turns 
against  him.  The  sovereign  accountable  to 
God  makes  a  pact  with  God;  the  sovereign 
accountable  to  the  people  has  made  a  pact 
with  chance.  We  must  keep  this  in  mind. 
I  admit,  I  have  admitted,  that  in  order 
that  the  pact  with  God  may  have  a  salutary- 
effect,  it  is  necessary  that  the  prince  have 
the  fear  of  God  ;  and  it  must  be  admitted  also 
that  it  was  exactly  this  fear  which  was  no- 
ticeably feeble  in  the  breasts  of  our  kings  of 
the  old  régime,  except  the  last  one.  But  I 
wish  to  make  it  clear  that  under  the  old 
régime,  if  constitutional  responsibility  did 
not  exist,  a  responsibility  nevertheless  did 
exist,  and  even  in  a  triple  form — responsi- 
bility to  God  which  did  not  cease  to  make  it- 
self felt;  responsibility  to  a  constitution 
"which  had  never  been  anything  but  in- 
fringed," as  Mme.  de  Staël  wittily  said,  but 
which  nevertheless  existed  in  idea  and  was 
often  recalled  by  the  lawyers;  responsibility 
to  the  people,  before  whom  the  king,  precisely 


170  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

because  he  had  destroyed  the  intermediary 
bodies,  felt  himself  to  stand  alone  in  case  he 
committed  a  serious  fault,  a  thing  to  make 
him  reflect  and  fear. 

In  our  day  we  have  so  constitutionally 
limited  the  responsibility  of  power  as  to 
make  it  practically  nil;  and  by  political 
custom,  altering  the  constitution,  we  have 
reduced  to  nothing  the  responsibility  already 
feeble  constitutionally  of  the  central  power 
and  its  agents.  The  president  of  the  re- 
public has  fairly  large  powers;  he  can  pro- 
rogue the  chamber  of  deputies  for  several 
months;  he  can,  with  the  consent  of  the 
senate,  dissolve  the  chamber  of  deputies 
and  send  them  to  the  country  for  a  fresh 
election;  he  can,  by  use  of  the  suspensive 
veto,  order  the  chamber  to  reconsider  a  bill 
passed  by  them.  It  is  curious  that  all  these 
provisions  have  become  dead  letters,  exist- 
ing only  on  paper,  and  are  in  practice  as 
though  they  were  not.  Since  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  chamber  by  President  Mac- 
Mahon  on   May   16,    1877,   no  chamber  of 


In  Political  Customs  171 

deputies  has  ever  been  dissolved.  Never 
since  1871  has  the  president  brought  about 
the  reconsideration  of  a  bill  passed.  Never 
since  1877  nas  the  president  prorogued  the 
chamber.  More;  constitutionally  the  presi- 
dent has  the  right  to  communicate  his  ideas 
to  the  chambers  by  messages.  Thiers  made 
frequent  use  of  this  method  of  government. 
It  is  a  method  of  government  in  this  sense: 
the  president  does  not  really  by  his  message 
issue  an  order  of  any  sort,  but  if  there  is 
discord  between  him  and  his  parliament, 
he  makes  the  nation  judge,  and  the  nation 
will  either  declare  itself  against  him  by 
electing  the  same  deputies,  or  for  him  by 
electing  others.  It  is  therefore  a  responsi- 
bility that  he  takes,  and  an  indirect  method 
of  government  that  he  adopts,  when  he 
addresses  a  message  to  the  chambers.  Never 
since  MacMahon  has  this  method  been 
employed. 

And  finally,  by  the  constitution,  the  presi- 
dent is  irrevocable  for  seven  years.  The 
chambers  recalled  one  president,  Jules  Grévy, 


172  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

without  any  formal  act  of  revocation,  because 
that  would  have  been  unconstitutional;  but 
they  gave  him  the  hint  to  resign  by  using 
the  famous  formula,  "the  chamber  .  .  .  the 
senate  .  .  .  awaiting  a  communication  from 
his  excellency  the  president." 

The  result  of  all  this  is  that,  in  the  happy 
phrase  of  M.  Aulard,  a  real  constitution  has 
replaced  the  legal  constitution,  and  so  com- 
pletely that  no  one  would  dare  to  violate 
the  real  constitution  in  order  to  apply  the 
legal  one,  and  that  to  act  constitutionally 
would  appear  shamelessly  unconstitutional. 
And  this  real  constitution  is  contained  in  one 
word:  the  president  of  the  French  republic 
is  a  cipher.  Or  in  another  word  :  there  is  no 
president  of  the  French  republic. 

This  is  so  true  that  a  statesman  who  is 
elected  president  of  the  republic  feels  simply 
that  his  political  career  is  ended.  It  is  ended, 
totally  and  forever,  for  as  president  of  the 
republic  he  has  no  duty  but  to  do  nothing 
and  to  say  nothing.  And  even  after  his  term 
expires,   since  usage  will  not  allow  an   ex- 


In  Political  Customs  173 

president  to  become  either  a  senator  or  a 
deputy,  he  must  go  on  doing  nothing  and 
saying  nothing.  The  office  of  president  of 
the  republic  ostracises  a  statesman  all  the 
time  he  has  it  and  all  the  time  after  he  has 
had  it.  It  annihilates  him  by  lying  upon 
him,  and  obliterates  him  when  it  leaves  him. 
These  principles,  which  are  inscribed  no- 
where and  which  are  in  force  just  the  same, 
are  so  strong  that  a  president  who  was  not 
in  accord  with  his  ministers,  M.  Loubet,  did 
not  dismiss  his  ministers,  not  prorogue  the 
chamber,  did  not  dissolve  the  chamber,  did 
not  demand  reconsideration  of  a  bill  passed, 
did  not  address  messages  to  the  chambers. 
But  sometimes  at  a  dinner  or  a  reception  he 
made  some  utterance  directly  opposed  to  the 
policy  of  his  ministers.  Thus  he  salved  his 
conscience,  but  he  brought  vividly  into  view 
the  "real"  constitution  and  the  strange 
paradox  it  involves.  One  might  have  said 
to  him,  "  If  these  are  your  views,  why  do  you 
not  employ  constitutional  means  to  make 
them  known,   and  constitutional  means  to 


i74  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

make  them  prevail,  within  the  limits  set  by 
the  constitution?"  And  since  he  did  not 
act  thus,  it  was  easy  to  read  between  the 
lines  of  his  speeches  this  proposition,  "Accord- 
ing to  the  real  constitution  I  have  none  of 
the  rights  given  me  by  the  legal  constitution, 
and  I  cannot  talk  like  a  private  citizen,  and 
as  for  action,  I  cannot  act  in  any  way  at 
all."  There  is  in  France  no  president  of 
the  republic;  there  is  no  head  of  the  state. 

This  is  a  very  important  thing  to  consider 
because  it  amounts  to  saying  that  France  is 
a  pure  democracy.  When  I  set  forth  the 
disadvantages — redoubtable  in  my  opinion — 
of  pure  democracy  and  of  the  results  that  will 
follow,  and  very  rapidly,  in  its  train,  I  am 
answered  with  the  ancient  democracies  and 
with  the  democracy  of  the  United  States. 
But  this  is  a  confusion  between  a  republic 
and  a  democracy,  and  no  confusion  is  greater. 
The  ancient  democracies  never  existed:  so 
much  for  them.  And  the  American  republic 
is  not  a  democracy. 

The  ancient  republics  were  aristocracies, 


In  Political  Customs  175 

except,  for  a  very  short  period,  the  Athenian 
republic;  there  democracy  finally  established 
itself,  and  coincided,  by  the  way,  with  the 
decadence  of  the  nation.  The  Spartan 
republic  was  an  aristocracy.  The  Roman 
republic  passed  without  transition  from 
aristocracy  to  government  by  one.  I  pro- 
bably need  not  mention  that  the  republic  of 
Venice  was  radically  aristocratic. 

As  for  the  American  republic,  it  is  a  con- 
stitutional monarchy  and  nothing  else.  With 
his  large  powers  in  foreign  relations,  and  in 
domestic  affairs  with  his  ministers  who  are 
not  responsible  to  congress,  with  his  right, 
which  he  uses,  of  initiating  legislation,  with 
his  right,  which  he  also  uses,  of  appointing 
all  the  functionaries  of  the  state,  the  president 
of  the  American  republic  is  a  sovereign. 
He  is  one  so  much  the  more  in  that  if  his 
ministers  are  not  responsible  to  congress, 
neither  is  he,  since  he  was  chosen  not  by 
congress  but  by  the  people.  At  bottom  and 
in  all  reality  the  president  of  the  American 
republic   is   a   very   powerful   constitutional 


176  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

monarch,  who  need  consider  nothing  but  the 
public  interest  and  need  take  pains  about 
nothing  but  public  opinion  to  be  popular,  to 
be  re-elected,  and  when  he  has  been  once 
re-elected  and  cannot  be  again,  to  be  honoured 
in  his  country.  He  is  a  sovereign  pro  tempore, 
but  a  sovereign.  An  ambassador  from  France 
to  the  United  States  said  to  me,  "The  presi- 
dent of  the  American  republic  is  incompar- 
ably more  a  king  than  the  king  of  Great 
Britain,  and  more  an  emperor  than  the 
emperor  of  Germany." 

There  has  never  been  and  there  is  not  in 
the  world  to-day  a  pure  democracy,  unless  it 
be  the  French  democracy.  That  is  why  we 
are  studying  it.  We  must  study  it  in  order 
to  foresee  what  it  will  become,  to  criticise  it 
and  advise  it  in  view  of  its  future,  to  reason 
about  it  almost  in  the  abstract.  We  are  a 
good  deal  reproached  for  it,  but  we  cannot 
do  otherwise  and  cannot  be  made  to  do 
otherwise.  We  base  our  reasoning  on  some 
memories  of  the  Athenian  democracy,  which 
it  is  true  existed  but  only  for  about  half  a 


In  Political  Customs  177 

century.  That  is  what  Rousseau  did  before 
us  when,  in  spite  of  the  Contrat  Social,  he 
attacked  pure  democracy.  We  reason  a 
little  too  from  the  French  revolution  which 
we  consider — in  the  course  that  it  ran,  in  the 
curve  that  it  traced  from  Mirabeau  to 
Babeuf — as  the  schema  of  the  history  of 
democracy,  as  the  prophetic  foreshadowing 
of  pure  democracy.  We  reason  a  little  also 
from  the  history  of  the  third  French  republic, 
with  the  tendencies  it  has  shown,  the  direc- 
tion it  has  taken;  and  we  announce  the 
democracy  of  to-morrow  as  a  prolongation 
of  the  democracy  of  1871-1911,1  as  the  pro- 
gressive radicalisation  of  the  democracy  of 
to-day.  But  finally  we  reason  chiefly  in 
the  abstract,  considering  the  very  essence 
of  democracy — that  is,  absolute  equality — 
and  affirming  that  French  democracy  will 
approach  more  and  more  closely  to  its 
essence,  more  and  more  closely  to  pure 
democracy. 

Is  it  legitimate  to  reason  thus,  and  is  it 

1  This  book  was  written  in  191 1.     Trans. 


178  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

impossible  that  democracy  will  correct  itself 
as  it  advances,  amend  itself  while  affirming 
itself,  and  itself  create  the  counterpoise  it 
needs? 

Yes,  I  think  it  is  legitimate  to  reason  thus, 
and  I  do  not  think  that  French  democracy  is 
correcting  itself  as  it  develops  because — and 
how  clearly  the  American,  Barrett  Wendell, 
sees  that  in  his  The  France  of  To-day — 
the  nature  of  the  Frenchman  is  to  be 
radical,  to  be  ideologistic,  to  pursue  his 
ideas  to  the  very  end,  to  have  no  fear  but 
quite  the  contrary  in  considering  whither 
his  ideas  will  lead  him. 

Nothing  is  more  true.  When  France  was 
for  the  establishment  of  Catholicism,  she 
saw  without  alarm  and  without  pity,  even 
for  herself,  she  saw  with  almost  unanimous 
satisfaction,  two  millions  of  the  best  and 
most  useful  Frenchmen  forced  to  leave  her 
that  this  idea  might  be  realised:  one  only 
religion  of  the  state  and  one  only  religion  in 
the  state.  Passionate  ideology!  "Let  the 
colonies  perish  rather  than  a  principle.  " 


In  Political  Customs  179 

When  France  was  nationalist,  that  is  to 
say  enamoured  of  the  principle  of  nationality, 
she  preached  and  dogmatised  against  her- 
self, against  her  evident  interest;  she  fought 
herself,  shed  blood  against  herself,  to  create 
nations  against  herself,  in  order  that  this 
idea  might  be  realised  :  great  nations  grouped 
according  to  race  and  to  language.  Passion- 
ate ideology.  Let  us  not  deceive  ourselves, 
one  of  the  Frenchmen  most  typical  of  the 
French  intellectual  character  is  Napoleon  III. 

If  France  is  made  like  this  intellectually,  I 
have  no  doubt  that  since  she  is  taken  with 
the  democratic  idea  she  will  push  it  to  the 
end  in  a  straight  line,  by  the  shortest  road. 

And  that  is  why  I  reason  abstractly  on 
this  question;  in  the  first  place  because  the 
fact  of  democracy  is  a  new  fact,  so  that  we 
can  hardly  do  otherwise;  in  the  second  place 
because  having  to  do  with  a  people  which 
itself  acts  in  the  abstract,  on  abstract 
grounds,  it  is  a  fairly  just  method  to  reason 
in  the  abstract  about  what  it  will  do  with  itself. 

To  sum  up  this  digression,   France  is  a 


i8o  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

democracy  enamoured  of  pure  democracy 
and  tending  with  all  its  force  to  realise 
pure  democracy. 

Am  I  far  from  my  subject?  I  do  not  think 
so.  France  is  a  democracy  tending  to  absolute 
democracy.  That  is  why  she  organises  her- 
self spontaneously,  almost  automatically, 
on  the  principle  of  absolute  democracy;  and 
this  principle  is  in  the  first  place  absolute 
equality  and  next  that  responsibility  be 
lodged  nowhere  and  that  no  one  be  respon- 
sible. The  Athenians  during  the  period  in 
which  they  were  a  democracy  had  no  gov- 
ernment; they  were  governed  by  the  mass 
of  citizens  who,  like  every  mass,  were  re- 
sponsible to  no  one,  unless  to  history,  which, 
to  be  sure,  has  brought  it  home  to  them. 
Well,  how  shall  we  suppress  responsibility? 
By  dividing  it,  subdividing  it,  dispersing  it, 
scattering  it  so  that  you  cannot  get  hold 
of  it  anywhere,  so  that  none  can  say  of  any 
man,  is  fecit.  That  is  exactly  what  our  con- 
stitution has  done,  and  our  political  customs 
still  more  than  our  constitution. 


In  Political  Customs  181 

In  France  the  governing  power  is  parlia- 
ment. It  is  not  the  fictitious  head  of  the 
state;  we  have  shown  that.  It  is  not  the 
ministers,  who,  in  perpetual  subjection  to 
parliament,  govern  and  administer  at  the 
dictation  of  parliament,  and  are  nothing  else 
than  the  executive  agents,  the  clerks  of  par- 
liament. All  governing  action  takes  place 
in  the  two  chambers.  Now,  the  members 
of  parliament  are  irresponsible  because  there 
are  nine  hundred  of  them.  Each  one  when 
he  makes  a  decision  feels  himself  covered  by- 
all  the  others  and  holds  the  just  view  that 
a  man  would  have  to  be  very  malicious 
to  find  fault  with  him.  The  sole  governing 
power  resides  in  a  confused  mass  which  offers 
no  point  to  which  a  man  can  address  him- 
self when  it  is  a  question  of  complaint, 
reclamation  or  indignation.  Montesquieu's 
great  theory  of  the  separation  of  powers  is 
a  theory  of  responsibility.  The  head  of  the 
state  is  responsible,  and  his  ministers  if  they 
govern  ;  the  judge  is  responsible  if  it  is  clearly 
understood  that  he  cannot   transfer  his  re- 


1 82  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

sponsibility  to  a  government  which  gives 
him  orders.  The  legislator  is  responsible  if 
he  is  not  innumerable;  and  if  on  the  other 
hand  he  is  not  a  confused  power,  which,  leg- 
islating, governing,  administrating,  and  even 
encroaching  upon  the  judiciary,  assumes  in 
appearance  so  many  responsibilities  that 
really  it  has  none  at  all. 

For  it  may  be  objected,  but  the  objection 
will  not  be  just,  that  a  fine  example  of  thirst 
for  responsibility  is  furnished  by  a  legislative 
body  which  makes  itself  everything,  legis- 
lative power,  executive  power,  administrative 
power,  judicial  power,  which  so  to  speak 
invites  all  possible  criticisms.  But  I  say 
that  the  objection  is  fallacious  because  by 
taking  everything  on  oneself  one  takes  no- 
thing, directly,  formally,  explicitly.  France 
feels  that  it  is  governed,  administered  and 
even  judged  by  its  deputies  and  senators;  but 
besides  the  fact  that  they  are  a  crowd, 
what  divides  and  distributes  their  respon- 
sibility is  that  it  is  by  an  executive  power,  an 
administrative  power,  a  judicial  power,  that 


In  Political  Customs  183 

parliament  governs,  administers  and  judges, 
so  that  no  one  can  tell  what  quantity  of 
power  or  influence  parliament  introduces 
into  each  of  its  powers.  Thus  in  its  capacity 
of  government,  of  administration  and  of 
justice,  parliament  is  an  occult  power  and 
France  feels  itself  governed,  administered, 
judged  by  a  power  occult  and  intangible. 
And  moreover,  because  parliament  has  a 
finger  in  everything  as  an  occult  power, 
when  it  is  on  its  own  ground  of  legislation  it 
escapes  its  responsibility  there  because  it  does 
not  appear  to  be  on  its  own  ground  even 
when  it  is,  since  it  is  incessantly  on  all  the 
others.  The  ubiquity  of  parliament  covers 
it  even  when  it  is  minding  its  own  business, 
because  it  diverts  the  attention  which  might 
be  directed  to  its  business  and  to  it  while 
doing  it.  The  members  make  laws,  but 
they  do  so  many  other  things  that  one  does 
not  regard  them  exactly  as  legislators.  They 
make  laws,  but  it  is  so  secondary  a  part  of 
the  mission  they  have  undertaken  that  it  is 
not  the  part  that  chiefly  draws  the  attention 


1 84  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

of  the  public,  which  moreover  can  only  be 
uncertain  and  confused  when  it  is  directed 
to  the  other  things  they  do. 

The  great  defect  of  parliamentary  govern- 
ment is  that  it  is  a  sort  of  syncretism;  when 
its  various  mechanisms  are  not  precisely 
differentiated  and  distinct,  legitimate  criti- 
cism drifts,  wanders,  does  not  know  where  to 
take  hold,  has  consequently  a  sense  of  impo- 
tence and  ends  by  reducing  itself  to  a  sort 
of  indifference  and  resignation.  We  are 
governed  in  the  artificial  shadows  which 
they  have  skilfully  created  so  that  neither 
the  governed  may  know  whom  to  blame 
nor  the  governing  know  very  clearly  what 
they  are  doing.  We  are  governing  and 
governed   by   touch.  .  .  . 

"Bah,  that  is  all  rhetoric!" 

Why  then,  consider  a  recent  example.  In 
the  affair  of  delimiting  Champagne,  the 
government  makes  a  decision — good  or 
bad,  that  is  not  the  question.  This  decision 
having  caused  an  insurrection  in  Champagne, 
the   senate,  on   interpellation,   decides   that 


In  Political  Customs  185 

there  should  have  been  no  act  of  delimitation 
and  censures  the  cabinet  for  this  act.  The 
cabinet  has  only  one  thing  to  do,  to  re- 
sign. They  do  not  resign  at  all,  but  put 
the  matter  in  the  hands  of  the  council  of 
state  by  the  expedient  of  the  blank  reso- 
lution, that  is  to  say,  they  charge  the  coun- 
cil of  state  with  making  the  law.  The 
chamber  in  its  turn  discusses  the  affair 
with  many  protests  against  the  senate,  and 
declares  its  confidence  in  the  government. 
What  confidence?  It  is  not  to  the  govern- 
ment that  it  should  have  accorded  confidence 
in  this  matter,  for  the  government  had 
disclaimed  it.  It  is  to  the  council  of  state, 
and  the  order  of  the  day  of  the  chamber 
should  have  read  as  follows:  "The  chamber 
having  heard  the  government,  which  has  no 
opinion,  and  having  none  itself,  and  relying 
on  the  council  of  state  which  it  begs  to  have 
one,  passes  to  the  order  of  the  day.  "  So  true 
is  it  that  in  this  matter,  at  this  time  of  writ- 
ing, we  are  not  governed  by  government, 
which  has  no   opinion,  nor   by    the   cham- 


1 86  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

ber,  which  has  no  opinion,  nor  by  the  senate, 
which  has  its  opinion  and  takes  no  account 
of  it;  we  are  governed  by  the  council  of 
state,  which  has  no  mandate  to  govern  and  is 
nothing  but  a  consultative  body.  This  is  a 
situation  unconstitutional  in  the  highest  de- 
gree. 

But  what  is  at  the  bottom  of  this  uncon- 
stitutional situation?  There  is  the  horror 
of  responsibility  and  the  effort  of  everything 
but  the  senate  to  get  under  cover.  The 
government  has  divested  itself  of  power,  has 
no  longer  a  will  and  doesn't  wish  to  have  any. 
The  chamber,  expressing  its  confidence  in 
the  lack  of  will  and  opinion  of  the  govern- 
ment, declares  vivaciously  that  it  is  without 
will  and  opinion  itself.  Everybody  except 
the  senate  hides  from  responsibility  by  hand- 
ling it  over  to  a  council  of  legislation  and 
administration  which  has  no  power  to  legis- 
late or  administer. 

The  ideal  of  all  these  gentlemen  seems  to 
be  to  have  that  body  decide  which  cannot  be 
called  to  account.     The  passion  for  hiding 


In  Political  Customs  187 

from  responsibility  is  here  caught  in  the  act. 
For  is  it  not  strange  that  a  government 
already  irresponsible  because  it  is  nothing 
but  the  executive  agent  of  parliament,  should 
hide  from  a  shadow  of  responsibility  by 
transferring  the  burden  of  decision  to  a  body 
which  does  not  form  part  of  the  government  ; 
and  that  a  chamber  already  irresponsible 
because  of  its  size,  shirks  the  shadow  of 
responsibility  by  transferring  it  to  a  govern- 
ment which  transfers  it  to  a  third  party, 
and  by  confiding  itself  to  a  government 
which  confides  itself  to  someone  else? 

Scatter  the  responsibility  so  thoroughly 
that  it  cannot  be  taken  hold  of, — that  you 
see  is  the  way. 

If  the  government  is  irresponsible  the 
agents  of  the  government  are  no  less  so 
and  may  be  more.  We  know  well  enough 
what  individual  liberty  is  in  Great  Britain 
and  in  the  United  States,  what  is  its  safe- 
guard and  what  causes  it  to  exist.  What 
causes  it  to  exist  is  that  you,  a  private 
citizen,    can    prosecute    a   functionary    who 


i88  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

molests  you  even  in  the  exercise  of  his 
function.  The  Anglo-Saxon  legislator  under- 
stands that  there  is  justice  to  be  invoked 
against  an  agent  of  government  as  well  as 
against  an  equal,  and  even  that  you  are 
quite  likely  to  find  a  molester  or  oppressor 
more  frequently  in  a  man  powerful  by  office 
than  in  an  equal.  Therefore  in  England 
and  America  you  can  bring  suit  against  a 
functionary  who,  even  in  the  exercise  of  his 
functions,  seems  to  you  to  have  injured 
you. 

In  France  you  cannot  do  it.  You  really 
can  do  it,  but  if  you  do,  the  functionary 
makes  a  plea  of  incompetence  which  brings 
the  case  before  the  court  of  conflicting  juris- 
dictions. This  court,  being  composed  chiefly 
of  functionaries  of  the  state,  cannot  decide 
for  the  private  citizen  as  against  the  function- 
ary. As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  right  of  a  pri- 
vate citizen  to  bring  an  action  at  law  against 
a  functionary  does  not  exist  in  France. 

And  when  one  thinks  that  it  might  exist 
without  increasing  very  much  or  at  all  the 


In  Political  Customs  189 

responsibility  of  the  functionary!  From 
the  moment  when  the  judiciary  depends  so 
completely  on  the  government — one  knows 
why — that  it  denies  that  it  can  find  against 
government  in  favour  of  a  citizen  or  thwart 
in  any  way  the  wishes  of  government,  why 
need  we  rob  it  of  jurisdiction  over  function- 
aries attacked  by  citizens,  since  it  is  highly 
probable  that  it  would  never  exert  this 
jurisdiction  in  favour  of  the  citizen  and 
against  the  functionary?  Ah,  no.  It  is 
not  enough  for  the  bench  to  consider  itself 
as  an  agent  of  government  to  assure  the 
irresponsibility  of  the  other  agents.  In 
order  that  this  irresponsibility  may  be 
intangible,  we  must  also  have  for  these  agents 
a  system  of  exception  and  privilege.  That 
multiplies  the  assurances  and  the  safeguards 
of  the  infallibility  of  the  functionary.  How 
fortunate  the  functionary  is  in  France,  and 
how  he  can  take  his  ease! 

In  reality  he  is  not  so  fortunate  nor  so  much 
at  his  ease  as  one  might  suppose.  He  is 
terribly  hampered  and  terribly  responsible. 


iço  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

But  he  is  hampered  by  those  who  ought  not 
to  hamper  him,  and  responsible  to  those  to 
whom  it  is  essential  that  he  should  not  be  re- 
sponsible. He  must  in  the  first  place  render 
an  account  to  his  government;  that  is  abso- 
lutely legitimate  and  unattackable.  But 
then  he  has  a  much  more  delicate  account  to 
render  to  that  occult  government  of  which  we 
have  spoken.  He  must  administer  his  office 
in  the  interest  of  the  senators  and  deputies  of 
his  region,  and  against  the  adversaries  of  the 
deputies  and  senators  of  his  region.  The 
occult  government  makes  no  other  demands 
upon  him  and  has  no  imperious  require- 
ment but  this.  This  is  a  matter  on  which 
I  have  insisted  elsewhere  and  I  need  not 
dwell  further  on  it  here. 

The  result  is  that  the  functionary,  irre- 
sponsible to  his  fellow-citizens,  for  he  is  not 
elected;  irresponsible  to  the  courts,  for  he 
is  not  amenable  to  the  courts,  is  responsible 
to  a  set  of  quasi-irresponsibles,  the  members 
of  the  chambers,  and  to  persons — these  same 
members — who,  in  regard  to  the  services  they 


In  Political  Customs  191 

have  been  able  to  require  of  him,  are  com- 
pletely irresponsible. 

In  fact,  before  whom  does  the  member  of 
parliament  come,  his  term  completed,  to 
render  an  account?  Before  his  party.  On 
what  does  his  party  interrogate  him?  It 
may  ask  him  how  he  has  voted,  what  laws 
he  has  made;  but  it  will  never  ask  him 
whether  he  has  exerted  an  influence,  an 
intimidation,  an  abusive  pressure  on  the 
functionaries  of  his  department.  On  the 
contrary,  if  it  should  have  any  reproach  to 
make  to  its  deputy  on  this  head,  it  would 
be  for  not  having  displayed  enough  energy 
in  making  the  functionary  act  in  the  interest 
of  the  party. 

So  the  government  functionary,  irrespons- 
ible to  justice,  is  responsible  to  quasi-irre- 
ponsibles,  who,  in  regard  to  what  they  makes 
him  do,  are  altogether  irresponsible.  It  fol- 
lows that  the  functionary  has  not  the  kind 
of  responsibility  that  would  be  useful,  but 
the  kind  that  is  fatal  ;  he  is  not  responsible  in 
the  direction  of   the  public  good  and  he  is 


192  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

closely  responsible  in  the  direction  of  social  in- 
justice, with  which  he  believes  he  is  entrusted. 

Such  is  this  government,  founded,  in 
principle  and  appearance,  on  right,  reason 
and  equity;  in  practice  and  by  the  way  it 
has  been  distorted,  so  dangerous  to  reason, 
justice  and  the  general  good.  In  a  word,  we 
have  founded  an  impersonal  government 
which  has  become  irresponsible,  and  I  know 
nothing  in  the  world  more  dangerous. 

The  remedies  would  be  of  two  sorts,  con- 
stitutional remedies  and  moral  remedies. 

Constitutional  remedies:  one  thinks  at 
once,  naturally,  of  monarchy.  It  is  quite 
natural,  since  democracy  is  advancing  to- 
wards despotism  because  it  is  impersonal, 
to  think  of  monarchy,  which,  being  essen- 
tially personal,  might  establish  the  safeguard 
of  liberty.  I  think  this  would  be  an  error. 
People  always  say  :  there  is  no  one  but  a  king 
who  can  be  above  all  parties  and  who,  being 
above  all  parties,  can  think  solely  of  the 
public  good  and  even  of  the  liberty  of  each, 
precisely  because  he  does  not  wish  one  party 


In  Political  Customs  193 

to  control  the  others,  oppress  the  others  and 
therefore  himself,  so  that  there  is  solidarity 
between  the  liberty  of  the  crown  and  the 
liberty  of  the  subject. 

This  is  not  bad  reasoning,  and  it  is  a  pleas- 
ure to  explain  or  sum  up   the   opinions   of 
persons  who  reason  so  well.     But  if  we  con- 
sult the  facts  and  if  we  recall  our  history, 
whence  does  it  arise  that  there  are  as  many 
parties  contending  for  power  under  a  king 
styled  absolute  as  in  a  republic?     The  fact 
is  incontrovertible.     Under  every  king  there 
have  been  parties,   that  is  to  say  coteries, 
each    having   its    chief,    its    lieutenants,    its 
clients,  its  sportularies,  and  each  one,  pro- 
fiting  by   the   shortcomings   of   the   others, 
disputing  the  royal  favour  and  obtaining  it 
in  its  turn  as  well  by  the  faults  of  the  others 
as  by  its  own  intrigues;  these  parties  suc- 
ceeded each  other  in  power  exactly  as  our 
parties  or  fractions  of  parties  succeed  each 
other  now;  from  which  it  results  that  there 
is  no  more  continuity  in  public  affairs  to-day 
than  there  was  under  the  old  régime,  but  also 


194  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

that  there  was  no  more  continuity  under 
the  old  régime  than  there  is  to-day. 

People  are  forever  repeating  after  Renan 
in  his  Réforme  intellectuelle  et  morale  that 
a  man  with  the  faculties  of  a  great  states- 
man could  never  become  minister  to-day, 
for  the  reason  that  he  could  never  become 
either  deputy  or  senator;  that  it  was  a  good 
deal  easier  for  Turgot  to  be  minister  in  1774 
than  it  would  be  to-day;  that  in  our  day  his 
modesty,  his  awkwardness,  his  lack  of 
oratorical  talent,  would  have  stopped  him  at 
the  threshold;  that  "in  1774  it  sufficed  for 
success  to  be  understood  and  appreciated 
by  the  abbé  de  Viry,  a  philosophical  priest 
who  had  the  ear  of  Mme.  Maurepas." 
Nothing  is  more  true  ;  but  they  forget  to  add 
that  Turgot,  if  he  arrived  very  easily,  departed 
more  easily  still  and  that  he  retained  power 
only  two  years,  was  overthrown  by  an  intrigue, 
and  never  regained  it. 

Those  who  emphasise  the  merits  of  royalty 
assume  always  a  very  intelligent  and  very 
obstinate  king  who  knows  how  to  choose  his 


In  Political  Customs  195 

ministers  and  how  to  keep  them,  maintaining 
himself  at  as  great  a  height  above  the  parties 
as  he  can,  which  is  absolutely.  Such  a  king 
was  Louis  XIII,  dominated  perhaps,  but  in- 
sisting so  firmly  on  being  always  dominated 
by  the  same  man,  who  was  a  man  of  genius, 
that  I  consider  him  as  the  most  intelligent 
and  most  energetic  of  all  our  kings.  Such  a 
king  was  Louis  XIV,  at  any  rate  during  the 
first  half  of  his  reign,  in  which  he  sustained 
Colbert  and  Louvois  against  all  their  enemies 
and  even  against  each  other.  The  theory 
of  the  king  who  is  very  intelligent,  very  firm 
and  above  all  parties,  is  then  not  a  pure 
assumption;  but  still  it  rests  on  an  exception 
and  it  is  not  on  exceptions  that  theories 
should  be  built.  The  truth  is  that  since 
nothing  is  rarer  than  a  firm  and  intelligent 
king,  there  is  strife  of  parties  and  succession 
of  parties  to  power  and  consequent  instabil- 
ity under  a  king  as  much  as  in  a  republic. 
Add  what  I  have  sometimes  said  before 
(but  it  is  the  duty  of  a  political  theorist  to 
repeat  himself)  that  as  far  as  France  is  con- 


196  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

cerned,  considering  that  the  republic  has 
existed  for  eighty  years,  it  is  the  first  virtue 
of  the  political  man,  in  view  of  the  respect 
due  to  important  facts  and  rooted  traditions, 
to  accept  the  republic  and  only  to  try  to  find 
the  best  in  it.  I  say  that  the  republic  has 
existed  in  France  since  1830  because  when 
the  monarchies  dispute  the  throne  in  a 
nation,  the  tendency  is  towards  a  republic  as 
the  necessary  solution,  and  virtually  it  is 
there  already;  even  physically  it  is  there 
already  since  it  is  governed  by  a  monarchy 
not  universally  admitted,  which  is  the  very 
essence  of  monarchy,  but  almost  universally 
contested.  Whence  it  follows  that  it  is 
governed  by  a  party,  that  it  is  governed 
for  a  time  by  a  party,  and  that  is  the  very 
essence  of  a  republic. 

It  is  then  profoundly  true  that  France 
has  been  a  republic  for  eighty  years,  which  is 
a  considerable  fact  and  one  so  long  in  exist- 
ence that  we  must  accept  it.  In  191 1  it  is 
essentially  traditionalist  to  be  a  republican. 

Setting  aside  absolute  monarchy  (or  parlia- 


In  Political  Customs  197 

mentary  monarchy  in  a  consultative  fashion, 
as  was  the  monarchy  of  the  old  régime) ,  should 
we  have  recourse  to  a  strictly  parliamentary 
monarchy,  monarchy,  that  is  to  say,  in  which 
the  king  reigns  and  does  not  govern,  in 
which  the  party  of  the  majority  governs, 
legislates,  administers  and  judges?  Since, 
try  as  I  will,  I  can  see  no  manner  of  difference 
between  this  form  of  monarchy  and  a  re- 
public, unless  it  consists  in  the  existence  of  a 
civil  list,  in  solicitude  for  my  own  time  and 
that  of  the  reader  I  shall  not  say  a  word 
about  parliamentary  monarchy. 

It  is  proper  then  that  France  remain  a 
republic,  and  it  would,  in  my  judgment, 
be  an  immeasurable  misfortune  for  her  to 
waste  her  strength  in  an  attempt  to  restore 
a  monarchy  contested,  hampered,  tram- 
melled and  very  probably  ephemeral,  and 
which  if  it  were  not  ephemeral  would  prolong 
as  long  as  it  lasted  strife,  opposition,  civil 
discord  and  waste  of  strength. 

So  let  us  be  republicans,  but  one  can  be 
a    republican    without    being    a    democrat, 


198  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

especially  a  narrow  and  superficial  democrat, 
to  use  Renan's  phrase.  It  is  a  question  of 
making  a  republic  that  will  work,  and  that, 
like  all  the  republics  that  have  lived,  will 
be  a  republic  with  a  democratic  base  and 
containing  an  aristocratic  element.  The 
aristocratic  element  exists  in  the  nation; 
it  always  exists.  But  the  sport,  the  paradox, 
the  irony  of  institutions  may  be  the  fact 
that  though  it  exists  in  the  nation  it  is  very 
carefully  eliminated  from  all  the  governing 
powers.  That  is  exactly  what  happens 
among  us. 

The  aristocratic  element  in  a  nation  is  all 
that  part  which  has  enough  of  vitality  and  of 
cohesive  force  and  of  sense  of  responsibility 
to  form  a  group,  an  association,  an  assem- 
blage of  parts,  an  organism,  to  become  a  living 
thing,  that  is  to  say,  a  collective  person.  An 
aristocratic  element  is  the  body  of  barristers; 
an  aristocratic  element  is  (or  it  might  be  with 
another  organisation  and  another  spirit) 
the  judiciary;  an  aristocratic  element  is  the 
body  of  physicians;  another  is  the  army,  by 


In  Political  Customs  199 

which  I  mean  the  body  of  officers;  another 
is  the  chambers  of  commerce;  another  is  the 
cities,  at  any  rate  the  largest,  with  their 
past,  their  traditions,  their  amour  propre 
and  their  sense  of  long-descended  responsi- 
bility, of  responsibility  to  their  ancestors 
and  to  their  descendants;  another  element 
(and  they  are  well  aware  of  it)  is  the  labour- 
syndicates. 

I  am  only  giving  examples.  Everything 
in  a  nation  that  is  not  purely  individual  is 
an  aristocratic  element.  These  are  the  ele- 
ments which  in  France  are  eliminated  from 
the  public  power.  A  curious  detail:  through 
party-preoccupation,  the  constitution  of  1875 
almost  eliminates  the  great  cities  from  the 
election  of  senators,  at  just  the  time  when 
as  great  moral  persons  the  cities  should  have 
had  a  more  considerable  representation  than 
that  of  the  country  districts,  and  the  aristo- 
cratic author  of  the  constitution  of  1875 
in  this  respect  produced  a  piece  of  the  most 
thorough  democracy. 

It    is    the    aristocratic    elements    which 


200  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

by  elective  representation  ought  to  form, 
and,  in  my  opinion,  exclusively,  the  upper 
chamber.  This  upper  chamber  would  re- 
present everything  in  the  nation  that  has 
cohesion,  collective  vitality  and  the  sense  of 
collective  responsibility.  And  this  upper 
chamber  alone  would  perform  the  legis- 
lative function,  having  alone,  in  my  judg- 
ment, the  capacity  to  do  so. 

By  the  side  of  this  chamber,  the  other  one, 
elected  by  universal  suffrage  and  absolutely 
necessary  in  order  that  the  government  may 
know  the  state  of  popular  opinion,  would 
have  the  right  of  veto  over  the  laws  made  by 
the  upper  chamber.  For  the  people,  being 
absolutely  incapable  of  knowing  what  they 
want,  but  very  capable  of  knowing  what 
they  suffer  and  what  they  do  not  want, 
should  in  consequence  be  represented  by 
persons  who  do  not  make  the  laws  but  who 
have  the  right  to  reject  laws  they  do  not 
want. 

Finally,  the  president  of  the  republic, 
elected  as  in  the  United  States  by  the  nation 


In  Political  Customs  201 

in  a  constitutional  sense,  that  is,  not  by- 
direct  universal  suffrage  but  by  universal 
suffrage  at  two  removes  (for  instance  either 
by  the  general  councils  or  by  the  provincial 
councils)  would  have  so  much  authority  as 
would  make  his  opinion  to  be  reckoned  with  ; 
he  would  not  be  simply  the  humble  servant 
of  parliament,  a  simple  supernumerary  magis- 
trate, before  leaving  and  in  fact  from  the 
moment  he  takes  office;  he  would  not  be 
from  the  moment  of  election  simply  a  future 
ex-president,  which  he  is,  neither  more  nor 
less,  under  the  present  régime.  But  he  would 
have,  by  the  messages  he  would  dare  to 
write,  by  the  right  of  second  deliberation 
which  he  would  venture  to  exercise,  by  his 
right  to  dissolve  even  the  senate,  which  he 
would  venture  to  exercise,  the  preponderance 
which  the  head  of  a  state  must  needs  have  if 
governmental  responsibility  is  to  be  centred 
anywhere. 

Objection.  But  is  it  true  that  in  the 
France  of  to-day  the  aristocratic  elements 
that    you    mention    are    really    aristocratic 


202  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

elements?  What  cohesion  and  what  collect- 
ive vitality  does  the  French  bench  exhibit, 
and  what  collective  person  does  it  con- 
stitute? What  collective  person  do  you  find 
in  the  army  or  the  university?  What  in 
the  chambers  of  commerce?  What  in  the 
cities?  Don't  you  see  that  there  is  no 
cohesion,  no  collective  vitality  and  no  com- 
mon feeling  of  responsibility  anywhere,  ex- 
cept perhaps  in  the  oldest  and  the  newest  of 
corporate  organisms,  the  clergy  and  the 
labour- syndicates  ? 

The  objection  is  very  sound.  It  is  quite 
evident  that  if  inorganic  democracy  is  present 
in  our  institutions  it  is  so  because  it  is  in 
the  facts,  and  it  would  be  very  strange  if 
it  were  found  in  the  institutions  without 
being  found  in  concrete  reality.  However 
à-priorily  and  ideologically  institutions  may 
be  created  among  certain  peoples  it  is 
still  true  that  the  facts  of  life,  when 
they  are  overwhelming,  impose  themselves 
upon  the  institutions  and  make  their  way 
into  them  as  if  by  force,  and  if  considerable 


In  Political  Customs  203 

and  powerful  aristocratic  phenomena  existed 
in  France  they  would  have  forced  an  entrance 
into  legislation  and  coerced  the  legislator, 
willy-nilly. 

Yes,  it  is  because  the  spontaneous  and 
natural  aristocracies  of  France  are  relaxed 
and  enervated  that  no  account  is  taken  of 
them  in  the  constitution.  It  is  because  the 
bench  is  nothing  more  than  a  corps  of  func- 
tionaries, as  obedient  as  the  highly  respect- 
able corps  of  excise  officers,  that  no  occasion 
has  suggested  itself  for  considering  it  as  an 
aristocratic  body.  It  is  because  the  univer- 
sity, the  army,  the  cities,  commerce,  have 
an  existence  far  more  formal  than  personal 
and  far  more  dependent  on  the  state  than 
corporate  in  themselves  that  they  quite 
naturally  failed  to  appear  to  the  eyes  of  the 
legislator  as  great  collective  persons.  It 
is  because  the  people  of  France  have  rather 
become  "human  dust"  and  "a  heap  of 
sand,"  according  to  the  consecrated  phrases 
of  aristocratic  writers,  that  the  French  con- 
stitution takes  no  account  of  cohesions  and 


204  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

collectivities.  And  it  is  because  the  French 
people  are  purely  demos  that  their  system  is 
democratic. 

"And  the  conclusion  is  that  you  reason 
à  priori  and  as  a  sheer  ideologue,  in  demand- 
ing an  aristocratic  organisation  for  a  people 
that  contains  no  aristocratic  forces." 

I  beg  your  pardon!  I  have  been  talking 
not  of  aristocratic  forces  but  of  aristocratic 
elements,  which  I  say  always  exist.  These 
bodies  have  no  strong  collective  life,  but  they 
exist  nevertheless  and  are  collective  bodies. 
And  provided  these  bodies  exist,  the  sense 
of  collective  vitality  and  the  sense  of  col- 
lective responsibility  can  be  given  to  them 
or  increased  in  them  and  developed  from 
feebleness  to  strength  by  according  them 
great  importance  and  a  great  place  in  the 
state. 

The  law  of  the  cause  which  is  effect  and  the 
effect  which  is  cause  applies  perfectly  here. 
It  is  because  the  aristocratic  elements  are 
feeble  in  the  nation  and  because  every 
individual  and  every  corporation  vies  with 


In  Political  Customs  205 

every  other  in  saying  "the  state  is  every- 
thing, let  it  do  everything,"  and  because 
there  is  therefore  no  great  difference  between 
corporations  and  individuals, — it  is  on  this 
account  certainly  that  our  régime  is  grossly 
democratic.  But  it  is  also  true  that  if  we 
should  take  account  of  these  aristocratic 
elements,  feeble  as  I  admit  they  are,  if  we 
should  consider  them  as  more  important 
social  forces  than  "the  dust"  and  should 
therefore  entrust  to  them  the  most  consider- 
able part  of  government,  then  we  should 
be  driven  to  develop  in  them  the  sense  of 
collective  vitality  and  of  collective  responsi- 
bility, to  give  them  a  conscience  or  make 
their  feeble  conscience  strong  and  form  them 
doubtless  into  very  great  and  considerable 
moral  persons. 

All  that  I  have  been  describing  is  in  my 
judgment  entirely  necessary  to  the  institu- 
tion and  the  existence  of  a  republic.  And  I 
think  that  all  I  know  of  history,  ancient, 
modern    and    contemporary,    supports    my 


206  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

theory,  or  at  any  rate  gives  less  support  to 
the  opposite  theory,  which  is  a  great  deal. 
But  I  recognise  that,  without  being  right, 
those  persons  are  not  entirely  wrong  who  say 
that  the  constitution  is  not  of  much  import- 
ance and  that  the  best  constitution  is  always 
the  one  you  have,  if  you  know  how  to  use  it 
with  intelligence  and  with  unremitting  pre- 
occupation with  the  public  interest.  Taken 
in  this  way,  we  could  make  a  fairly  good  job 
of  the  constitution  we  have,  on  the  condition 
of  using  it  in  accordance  with  its  spirit 
and  not  substituting  a  "real"  constitution  for 
the  legal  one. 

We  have  a  senate  which  is  not  at  all  what 
it  should  be,  that  is,  aristocratic  in  my  sense 
of  the  word  ;  which,  given  the  organisation  of 
its  electoral  colleges,  is  elected  solely  by  the 
prefects  and  which  will  therefore  always  repre- 
sent the  government  of  the  moment  rather 
than  the  nation  ;  which  may  perhaps  be  very 
much  more  "democratic"  than  the  chamber 
of  deputies  if  we  establish  the  scrutin  de  liste 
with     proportional     representation     as     the 


In  Political  Customs  207 

method  of  making  up  the  latter;  in  a  word, 
we  have  in  the  senate  a  very  poor  legislative 
instrument.  But  still  it  represents  the  aver- 
age of  rural  ideas;  it  is  the  chamber  of  the 
peasant;  it  will  never  be  socialist;  it  is  con- 
stitutionally composed  of  elderly  men,  which 
is  a  guarantee  of  relative  prudence;  it  is 
renewed  by  fractions,  which  is  a  guarantee  of 
order  and  of  continuity  in  its  labours;  it  is 
not  very  large,  though  it  is  too  large  and  I 
should  like  to  have  not  more  than  five  hund- 
red senators  and  deputies  all  told.  But  as 
the  effect  of  an  apparently  insignificant  de- 
tail of  its  constitution,  that  a  senator's  term 
of  office  is  nine  years,  it  is  composed  in  part 
of  political  veterans,  old  deputies  who  are 
tired  of  making  an  electoral  campaign  every 
four  years,  and  want  a  long  legislative  term. 
On  the  whole  it  is  not  a  deplorable  political 
instrument. 

It  would  certainly  hold  the  balance  of 
power  if  it  were  simply  to  take  it  ;  if  it  did  not 
hurry  through  its  examination  of  the  budget 
in  a  fortnight  on  the  ground  that  there  are 


2o8  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

already  eleven  "twelfth  provisos";  if  it  were 
not  afraid  to  invite  the  president  to  require 
a  second  consideration  of  a  bad  bill  passed 
by  the  chamber;  if  it  were  not  afraid  to 
invite  the  president  to  dissolve  the  chamber 
when  an  appeal  to  the  electors  is  indicated; 
in  a  word,  if  it  were  not  afraid  to  the  point 
of  panic  of  any  sort  of  conflict,  as  if  the  reason 
for  having  two  houses  in  any  country  with 
parliamentary  government  were  not  precisely 
that  there  may  be  conflicts,  that  is  to  say, 
that  the  laws  voted  by  one  house  may  be 
controlled  by  the  other,  with  the  result  of 
unanimity  when  the  laws  are  good  but  of 
conflict  when  they  are  bad. 

But — and  this  is  very  curious — the  super- 
stition of  democracy  is  so  strong  that  the 
senate,  because  it  is  elected  by  universal  suf- 
frage at  two  removes,  like  the  Assemblies  of  the 
Revolution,  instead  of  by  direct  universal  suf- 
frage, like  the  chamber,  believes  and  feels  itself 
less  legitimate  and  is  always  in  fear  of  having 
its  origin  thrown  in  its  face  so  that  it  seems  to 
be  continually  blushing  in  advance. 


In  Political  Customs  209 

Finally,  the  president  has  fairly  extensive 
powers.  The  mere  fact  that  he  has  them 
constitutionally  shows  him  that  he  ought  to 
take  a  hand  in  political  life,  that  he  ought 
not  to  resign  himself  to  the  rôle  of  figure- 
head, or  to  making  pompous  tours  of  the 
provinces  and  colonies  as  the  travelling  re- 
presentative of  the  republic.  Constitution- 
ally he  is  the  director  of  the  national  policy; 
this  part  he  should  play  with  discretion, 
with  tact,  but  he  should  play  it.  Without 
imposing  his  opinion,  save  on  altogether 
exceptional  occasions  and  then  in  the  con- 
stitutional forms,  he  should  manage  to  have 
it  always  known.  In  most  cases  the  presi- 
dential opinion  will  be  only  an  opinion,  but 
a  considerable,  an  important  opinion,  an 
opinion  coming  from  a  high  source  and 
having  great  weight,  not  bearing  directly 
upon  deliberation  but  in  the  first  instance 
upon  opinion  and  then  upon  the  mind  of 
each  senator  and  deputy,  and  finally  and 
naturally  upon  deliberation  and  conclusion 
themselves. 
14 


2io  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

On  every  important  question  the  opinion 
of  the  president  should  be  known  to  all.  It 
is  told  as  a  fact  that  a  former  president  of 
France  said,  speaking  of  the  time  when  he 
was  in  office,  "I  held  my  tongue  constitution- 
ally." Isn't  this  a  clear  example  of  the 
superstition  that  reigns  in  the  political  world 
in  regard  to  the  "real"  constitution?  What! 
the  constitution  that  gives  the  president  the 
task  of  appointing  ministers,  of  presiding 
over  the  deliberations  of  the  cabinet-council, 
of  provoking  second  consideration  by  the 
chamber,  et  cetera,  this  constitution  imposes 
silence  on  the  president?  The  constitution 
bids  him  hold  his  tongue?  Then,  since 
it  is  absolutely  impossible  to  think  without 
talking,  and  equally  impossible  to  form  the 
habit  of  silence  without  losing  that  of 
thought,  the  constitution  means  that  the 
president  should  not  think.  That  is  curious. 
I  admit  that  if  the  ex-president  meant  to 
say,  "the  constitution  gives  me  the  right  to 
keep  still,"  he  is  incontestably  within  his 
right.     But  the  circumstances  show  that  he 


In  Political  Customs         211 

meant  to  say,  "the  constitution  imposes  on 
me  the  duty  of  silence,"  and  that  is  what 
is  singular.  It  has  been  said  that  the  silence 
of  the  people  is  the  text-book  of  kings  ;  but  one 
cannot  understand  how  the  silence  of  kings 
can  be  the  text-book  of  the  people,  and  kings 
owe  to  the  people  the  lessons  they  mean 
to  give  them.  Now,  the  intimates  of  the 
president  of  whom  we  speak  knew  for  certain 
that  the  president  was  not  in  agreement  with 
his  prime  minister;  it  was  important  for  the 
instruction  of  members  of  parliament  and  of 
the  public,  in  order  that  they  could  make 
suitable  and  useful  reflections  upon  it,  that 
this  divergence,  without  being  emphasised, 
should  be  known.  The  president  then  is 
invited  by  the  constitution  to  play  a  certain 
part  and  he  ought  in  conscience  to  play  it. 
It  is  true  that  senators  and  deputies, 
jealous  of  being  the  sole  governing  power, 
have  a  tendency  to  elect  to  the  presidency 
someone  highly  respectable  but  colourless 
and,  either  by  age  or  by  character,  willing  to 
be  passive.     They  have  often  done  so,  and 


2i2  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

the  odds  are  in  favour  of  their  always  doing 
it  hereafter.  The  desire  to  have  power 
without  responsibility  creates  the  desire  to 
place  in  the  chief  position  a  man  who  is  not 
responsible  either  and  does  not  wish  to  be 
so. 

Lastly,  the  judiciary,  even  as  it  is  con- 
stituted, could,  if  it  honestly  and  patiently 
sought  responsibility  instead  of  fleeing  it, 
play  a  very  important  part,  a  very  useful 
part,  and  the  part  it  ought  to  play.  Without 
doubt  we  must  say  in  this  case  that  the  con- 
stitution itself  invites  the  judiciary  to  efface 
itself  and  to  be  nothing  but  a  docile  agent 
of  government.  The  great  vice  of  the  bench 
in  France  is  that  it  is  a  career,  like  the  depart- 
ment of  registration,  which  one  enters  very 
young,  at  a  very  small  salary  and  in  which, 
as  everywhere,  one  advances  very  slowly  if 
he  confines  himself  to  the  correct  performance 
of  his  duties,  and  where,  as  everywhere,  one 
advances  rapidly  if  he  renders  services  to  the 
government.  Well,  a  man  seeks  advance- 
ment,   he    is    dominated    by    the    care    for 


In  Political  Customs         213 

advancement,  and  he  often  does  what  is 
necessary  to  obtain   it. 

In  England  the  bench  is  not  a  career;  it  is 
the  crown  of  a  career.  There  they  make 
judges  of  old  barristers,  men  who  have 
achieved  their  career,  and  a  brilliant  one, 
at  the  bar  and  who  have  there  formed  habits 
of  independence  which  they  do  not  lose; 
moreover  they  have  no  reason  to  desire 
advancement  because  there  is  hardly  any- 
thing left  to  advance  to.  In  a  word,  the 
bench  is  retirement,  very  brilliant,  and,  in 
parenthesis,  very  well  paid,  but  it  is  retire- 
ment. An  English  judge  has  all  the  reasons 
in  the  world  for  being  perfectly  independent. 

We  can  see  that  these  good  effects  do  not 
always,  do  not  absolutely,  result  from  the 
institution  but  far  more  from  usage.  There 
is  no  reason  why  the  bench  should  not  be 
made  a  career  in  England,  with  all  the  result- 
ant disadvantages  which  the  thing  has  in 
this  country.  Simply  it  is  not  done,  from 
fixed  habit,  from  custom,  perhaps  from  an 
obscure  feeling  that  the  dignity  of  the  bench 


2i4  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

does  not  permit  it  to  be  a  career;  the  result 
is  that  without  a  single  line  of  law  on  the 
matter,  they  have  an  excellent  judiciary. 

I  say  nevertheless  that  even  with  a  con- 
stitutionally bad  form  of  magistracy,  even 
with  the  habit,  bad  also,  of  making  the 
magistracy  a  career  like  another,  our  bench 
would  be  excellent  if  it  wanted  to  be.  It 
would  suffice  if  it  had,  collectively,  the  sense 
of  its  responsibility  which  is  enormous,  the 
sense  that  it  is  nothing  less  than  the  keystone 
of  the  arch  of  a  free  country  ;  that  the  citizen 
will  not  be  free  and  therefore  useful  unless 
he  feels  that  his  rights  will  be  acknowledged 
and  sustained  against  the  central  power  by  a 
power  perfectly  independent  and  impartial. 
A  bench  penetrated  by  this  idea  would 
assure  its  independence  by  taking  it,  by 
affirming  it,  by  exercising  it.  However 
greedy  the  government  might  be  of  complete 
authority  and  of  omnipotence,  it  could  not 
"purge"  the  bench  every  six  months  and 
it  would  have  to  put  up  with  a  judiciary 
independent,  impartial  and  austere. 


In  Political  Customs         215 

Good  institutions  are  an  excellent  thing; 
but  even  bad  ones  can  be  made  good  in 
practice  by  the  way  we  use  them.  In  partic- 
ular it  hardly  makes  any  difference  whether 
independence  is  secured  by  law  if  a  man  is 
independent  by  nature  and  if  a  body  is 
composed  of  individuals  who  are  naturally 
independent  and  do  not  allow  themselves 
to  be  led. 

We  have,  then,  a  constitution  which  cer- 
tainly needs  correction,  but  which  even  as  it 
stands  would  not  be  worse  than  another 
whose  imperfections  are  not  apparent,  if  our 
character  were  better,  more  firm,  more  ele- 
vated, more  autonomous.  And  this  brings 
us  to  the  last  general  reflections  that  we 
have  to  present  to  the  reader. 


FOR   EACH    ONE   OF   US 

The  French  character  is  not  on  as  high  a 
level  as  the  French  mind,  and  that  is  the 
cause  of  all  the  trouble.  The  French  mind 
is  of  the  first  order.  As  a  creator  of  ideas, 
a  conqueror  of  knowledge,  a  creator  of 
beauty,  no  mind  in  the  world  is  the  su- 
perior of  the  French  mind  or  perhaps  its 
equal.  The  French  character  is  defective. 
"There  are  in  France,"  said  Renan,  "as 
many  men  of  heart  and  men  of  mind  as  in 
any  country;  but  none  of  that  comes  to  the 
fore."  Why  does  it  not  come  to  the  fore? 
What  is  lacking  of  the  conditions  that  would 
bring  it  to  the  fore?  Character,  will.  We 
are  light,  we  lack  perseverance,  obstinacy, 
tenacity.  We  are  prompt  to  give  in.  We  are 
children,  we  are  greybeards,  we  are  never — I 
216 


For  Each  One  of  Us  217 

speak  of  the  majority — in  the  prime  of  life. 
Without  being  lazy — far  from  it — we  like  to 
lie  back  on  those  who  make  us  work.  It  is 
the  paradox  of  our  nature.  We  like  to  sur- 
render ourselves  to  the  state  while  allowing 
it  to  impose  even  heavy  tasks  upon  us. 
The  basis  of  this  paradoxical  inclination  is 
the  lack  of  personal  will,  and  this  lack  of 
personal  will  itself  comes  from  the  horror 
of  responsibility. 

It  is  not  so  much  that  we  do  not  wish  to 
act  as  that  we  do  not  care  to  have  the  results 
of  our  actions  laid  to  our  charge.  No  one 
likes  better  than  we  to  say,  "I  wash  my  hands 
of  it  ;  it  is  not  my  fault  ;  what  would  you  have 
me  do?  I  can  do  nothing  about  it  because 
I  have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  " 

We  were  fashioned  to  this  shape  by  two 
centuries  of  brilliant  despotism,  of  which  we 
do  not  cease  to  be  proud.  We  have  accus- 
tomed ourselves  to  count  ourselves  as  naught, 
and  to  expect  that  everything  will  be  done  by 
everybody  without  the  aid  of  anyone.  This 
is  natural  because  in  the  old  days  everything 


2i8  The  Dread  of  Responsibility- 
was  done  by  the  crown  without  any  private 
initiative.  We  imagine  to-day  that  every- 
thing is  done  by  the  aggregate  without  the 
will  to  act  of  any  of  the  individuals  compos- 
ing the  aggregate.  All  have  replaced  one, 
and  nothing  is  changed. 

But  in  fact  everything  is  changed  and  a 
democracy  cannot  by  itself,  in  itself,  and  by 
the  single  fact  of  its  existence,  replace  a 
central  will  and  a  central  intelligence.  It 
must  produce  from  its  bosom,  or  from  its 
bosom  must  spring  of  themselves,  individ- 
uals who  can  will.  Individuals  who  can  will, 
who  accept  responsibility,  who  love  respon- 
sibility, who  unite  in  a  common  thought 
and  will,  and  who  accept  and  love  common 
responsibility,  these  are  aristocrats. 

Whence  it  follows  that  a  democracy  can 
live  only  on  condition  of  producing  aristo- 
cracies or  permitting  aristocracies  to  pro- 
duce themselves.  That  seems  strange,  but 
nothing  is  more  certain.  The  vitality  of 
democracies  is  measured  by  the  amount  of 
power  they  have  to  generate  aristocracies. 


For  Each  One  of  Us  219 

And  moreover  it  is  not  enough,  as  I  allowed 
myself  to  say  for  a  moment,  that  the  demo- 
cracies allow  aristocracies  to  spring  from 
them;  it  is  necessary  that  the  democracies 
be  themselves  aristocratic  in  the  sense  of 
having  themselves  a  will  and  a  taste  for  will. 
The  individuals  that  compose  them  must  have 
the  sentiment  of  individual  will,  of  individual 
tenacity  ;  for  it  is  only  on  this  condition  that 
they  will  understand  the  qualities  of  their  aris- 
tocracies and  support  them,  sustain  them, 
love  them,  while  keeping  an  eye  on  them. 

A  nation  is  an  army  which  loves  its  officers 
because  it  understands  their  qualities  and 
virtues,  and  it  does  not  understand  them 
unless  it  has  them  itself,  in  a  rudimentary 
state  but  real  and  already  strong.  A  nation 
is  a  collection  of  wills  and  an  organisation  of 
wills.  The  collection  of  wills  is  the  nation 
itself;  the  organisation  of  wills  is  the  aristo- 
cracies which  it  gives  itself,  which  it  approves 
and  which  it  admires  for  their  strength  of 
will.  The  will  of  the  people  should  be  that 
its   chiefs   have   wills.     I   frequently   repeat 


220  The  Dread  of  Responsibility 

the  remark  of  a  candidate  in  a  comedy: 
"Citizens,  all  that  you  will,  I  will  more  than 
you."  The  citizens  ought  to  reply:  "I 
have  a  will,  and  that  will  is  that  you  have  a 
will  and  that  you  know  what  you  will." 

The  taste  for  responsibility  is  made  up 
of  self-respect  and  respect  for  the  collectivity 
of  which  one  is  a  unit.  The  individual  must 
be  able  to  respect  himself,  the  collectivity 
must  be  able  to  respect  its  collective  con- 
science and  the  duty  that  this  imposes,  the 
nation  must  be  able  to  respect  the  national 
conscience  and  the  national  duty,  which  is 
to  live  as  free  men  in  all  relations,  domestic 
or  foreign.  The  secret  desire  of  every  man  to 
count  on  someone  else,  on  a  number  of  others 
or  on  all  the  others,  is  a  surrender  and  a 
desertion.  We  have  too  many  who  surrender 
from  indifference  and  desert  from  inertia. 

We  must  react  against  this  national  fault, 
which  has  for  its  parents  the  natural  mild- 
ness of  our  manners  and  which  has  been 
fostered,  as  it  were  with  care,  by  long  years 
of    despotism.     Never    say,    "It's    not    my 


For  Each  One  of  Us  221 

fault."  It  is  everybody's  fault,  high  or  low, 
Never  say,  "I  can't  do  anything  about 
it."  One  can  always  do  something  if  it  be 
only  to  give  an  example  of  personal  energy 
and  to  look  about  one  for  other  energies,  even 
very  obscure  ones,  with  which  to  join  one's 
own  and  thus  form  a  nucleus  of  social  force. 
I  should  not  say,  the  kingdom  of  this 
world  is  to  the  energetic  and  those  who  are 
not  afraid  of  being  blamed.  It  is  not  a 
question  of  reigning  but  of  living.  Man 
lives  by  will  alone.  Goethe  said,  "A  man 
does  not  die  until  he  renounces  life  ;  he  lives  as 
long  as  he  wishes  to  live."  Perhaps  this  is 
not  altogether  true  of  individuals,  but  it  is 
true  of  peoples.  Nietzsche  has  talked  a 
great  deal  about  the  "will  of  power. "  There 
is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  about  that;  but 
there  is  a  will  of  power  that  cannot  be  too 
highly  recommended  to  and  wished  for  those 
one  loves,  beginning  with  oneself;  it  is  the 
will  of  power  over  oneself. 


Initiation    into    Literature 

By  Emile  Faguet 

of  the  French  Academy 

With  additions  specially  written  for  the  English 
edition 

Translated  from  the  French  by 

Sir  Home  Gordon,  Bart. 

12°.     $1.25  net 

This  volume,  as  indicated  by  the  title,  is  de- 
signed to  show  the  way  to  the  beginner,  to  satisfy 
and  more  especially  to  excite  his  initial  curiosity. 
It  affords  an  adequate  idea  of  the  march  of  facts 
and  of  ideas.  The  reader  is  led,  somewhat 
rapidly,  from  the  remote  origins  to  the  most 
recent  efforts  of  the  human  mind. 

It  should  be  a  convenient  repertory  to  which 
the  mind  may  revert  in  order  to  see  broadly  the 
general  opinion  of  an  epoch — and  what  connected 
it  with  those  that  followed  or  preceded  it.  It 
aims  above  all  things  at  being  a  frame  in  which 
can  be  conveniently  inscribed,  in  the  course  of 
further  studies,  new  conceptions  more  detailed 
and  more  thoroughly  examined. 


Initiation 
into  Philosophy 

By  Emile  Faguet 

Translated  from  the  French  by 

Sir  Home  Gordon,  Bart. 
12°.    $1.25  net 

This  volume  is  planned  for  the  beginner. 
It  is  designed  to  satisfy  his  initial  curi- 
osity and  in  especial  to  excite  that  curiosity. 
It  is  written  in  a  very  lucid  style,  giving 
a  rapid  sketch  of  the  history  of  philosophy 
from  the  time  of  Thaïes  down  to  the  last 
century,  avoiding  as  far  as  possible  tech- 
nical language.  The  author  brings  out  in 
a  few  sentences  the  keynote  of  the  teaching 
of  each  school  and  the  main  lines  of  each 
great  man's  thought. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


Introduction  to  the 

Study  of  English 

Literature 


W.  T.  Young 

Lecturer  in  English  Literature  in  the  University  of  London 

Goldsmith's  College.    Joint  Editor  of 

The  Cambridge  Anthologies 

16°.    75  cents  net 


"This  little  book  attempts  to  advance  a  step  towards  the 
ideal  of  a  History  of  Literature  which  may  be  used  with- 
out being  abused;  in  other  words,  which  may  be  accepted 
as  a  guide  to  deeper  and  wider  reading,  not  as  a  short  cut 
to  a  superficial  and  specious  knowledge  of  the  classics  of 
our  language.  The  necessary  informative  detail,  as  full  as 
space  permits,  of  titles,  dates,  historical  links  and  the  like, 
is  accompanied  by  only  such  biographical  matter  as  is  seen 
to  have  an  immediate  bearing  upon  literature.  _  The  rest 
of  the  book  does  not  pretend  to  offer  any  final  judgment, 
or  to  provide  ready-made  criticism,  for  this  is  the  greatest 
disservice  a  teacher  can  possibly  render  to  a  student.  The 
intention  is  rather  to  prospect  in  company  with  the  reader, 
to  investigate  clues  with  him,  to  lure  curiosity,  to  challenge 
thought." — Extract  from  the  Preface. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


The 
Science  of  Happiness 

By  Jean  Finot 

Author  of  "  Problem  of  the  Sexes,"  etc. 
Translated  from  the  French  by 

Mary  J.  Saiford 

6°.    $1.75  net 

The  author  considers  a  subject,  the  solution  of 
which  offers  more  enticement  to  the  well-wisher 
of  the  race  than  the  gold  of  the  Incas  did  to  the 
treasure-seekers  of  Spain,  who  themselves  doubt- 
less looked  upon  the  coveted  yellow  metal, 
however  mistakenly,  as  a  key  to  the  happiness 
which  all  are  trying  to  find.  "Amid  the  noisy 
tumult  of  life,  amid  the  dissonance  that  divides 
man  from  man,"  remarks  M.  Finot,  "the 
Science  of  Happiness  tries  to  discover  the 
divine  link  which  binds  humanity  to  happi- 
ness through  the  soul  and  through  the  union 
of  souls."  The  author  considers  the  nature 
of  happiness  and  the  means  of  its  attainment, 
as  well  as  many  allied  questions. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


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